NFPP 08 - Ontario Power Plant Lookout

Lines Written in the Album of The Table Rock, Niagara Falls by George Menzies


Great spirit of the waters! I have come
From forth mine own indomitable home,
Far o'er the billows of the eternal sea,
To breathe my heart's deep homage unto thee,
And gaze on glories that might wake to prayer
All but the hopeless victim of despair.
Flood of the forest, fearfully sublime,
Restless, resistless as the tide of time,
There is no type of thee — thou art alone,
In sleepless glory, rushing on and on.
Flood of the desert! thou hast been to me
A dream; and thou art still a mystery.
Would I had seen thee, years and years agone,
While thou wert yet unworshiped and unknown,
And thy fierce torrent, as it rushed along,
Through the wild desert poured its booming song,
Unheard by all save him of lordly mood —
The bronzed and free-born native of the wood.
How would my heart have quivered to its core,
To know its God, not all revealed before!
In other times when I was wont to roam
Around the mist-robed mountain peaks of home
My fancy wandered to this Western clime,
Where all the haunts of nature are sublime;
And thou wert on my dream so dread a thing,
I trembled at my own imagining.
Flood of the forest! I have been with thee,
And still thou art a mystery to me.
Years will roll on as they have rolled, and thou
Wilt speak in thunder as thou speakest now;
And when the name that I inscribe to-day
Upon thine altar shall have passed away
From all remembrance, and the lay I sing
Shall long have been all but a forgotten thing —
Thou wilt be sung, and other hands than mine
Shall wreathe a worthier chaplet for thy shrine.

August 1835.

Source: Table Rock Album and Sketches of the Falls and Scenery Adjacent. Buffalo: Steam Press of Thomas and Lathrops, copyright by Jewett, Thomas & Co.,1856c.1848

View this poem on the Niagara Falls Poetry Project website



Ontario Power Plant jammed with ice, photo taken from the American side. Transformer building at the top, surge tank at right
 


Ontario Power Plant ice jam January 29, 1938 by Norman Smith. Remains of Table Rock jutting out at top left
 


Six Million Wild Horses, a painting by Edwin Chase, 1924, commemorating the amount of power being produced at Niagara Falls
 


 


Ice buildup has always been a problem at Niagara Falls. As you can see from the video below, the ice bridge that formed every year was a source of entertainment and attracted many visitors. Tragedies did occur, though, and after the deaths of three people in 1912 a ban on people on the ice bridge was put in place. In 1938, ice at the base of the Upper Steel Arch Bridge knocked the bridge down. It was replaced by the current Rainbow Bridge. A boom has been put in place across the mouth of the Niagara River every year since 1964 to help prevent ice buildup below the falls.

A 360 degree pan of Niagara Falls during the extremely severe winter of 1903-04; the camera was positioned on or near the ice frozen over the top of the rapids created by the Falls, panning over the Falls, the frozen area, both banks and the full cantilever suspension bridge between Canada and the U.S. People can be seen walking on the ice. Filmed by Edwin S. Porter


 
 


This point of interest is one of many on the GuideTags app –
a free digital interpretive guide that features thematic tours, routes, and discovery sessions,
and automatically tells geolocated stories about the places that surround us.
Download the app today, and start exploring!
Contact us if you would like to create your own content.
Report an error or inappropriate content.