#st. lawrence seaway

[allthecanadianpolitics]

The St. Lawrence Seaway has shut down as hundreds of workers walked off the job Sunday. The halt is expected to affect cargo shipments immediately along the artery that runs between Montreal and Lake Erie. In a release shortly after midnight on Sunday, the union said they were unable to reach an agreement with the employer by the strike deadline, despite negotiations "right up to the last moment." "We cannot allow workers' rights to be compromised. We remain open to discussion and hope that the employer will reconsider its position for the good of all," Daniel Cloutier, Unifor's Quebec director, said in a release.

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Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[pwlanier]

Today in Great Lakes shipping history. June 20th.

Seaway Queen nears completion in 1959.

Seaway Queen Captain Frank D. Harpell

1959: On June 20, 1959, the SEAWAY QUEEN began her maiden voyage. The vessel was appropriately named, as at the time she was the largest Canadian vessel on the Great Lakes, the 2nd largest on the Great Lakes overall (behind the EDMUND FITZGERALD), and she entered service the same week that Queen Elizabeth II and President Dwight D. Eisenhower formally dedicated the St. Lawrence Seaway. She was one of the more popular and classic looking vessels on the Great Lakes.

Boat Nerd

[celtics-art-portfolio]

A little late to actually posting this to socials thanks in large part to TotK's release, but I have done yet another label for Lost Villages Brewery. This time it was for their label "Granny's Ghost" which is roughly based on the tale of Canada's first UFO sighting that also doubles as a ghost story. The amount of work I did, while worth it, was wild. My poor NVLD brain was not a fan of doing the buildings here and I actively hated the house and barn after I was done with them. Either way, always happy to work with a local business like this. This artwork marks my third label with them and I couldn't be more happy.

[southpacifictravel]

The 147-meter MV Mick owned by dship Carriers is seen here carrying a load of wind turbine blades on the St. Lawrence Seaway.

[aultsville]

Cartoons by Bob Eadie about the St. Lawrence Seaway

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"POUR LA NAVIGATION FLUVIALE," Le Petit Journal. June 11, 1933. Page 12. --- On approfondit la rivière Détroit, qui relie les lacs Huron et Michigan, afin de pouvoir donner passage à des navires de 26 pieds de tirant d'eau. Des ingénieurs américains, se servant de la dynamite, creusent une cavité de 450 pieds de large sur un mille et demi de long. Aux extrémités de la partie creusée, en a élevé des digues afin d'empêcher l'envahissement des travaux par l'eau de la rivière. Et quand l'immense trou sera creusé, il faudra faire sau ter ces digues à leur tour Cela fait partie d'un projet important, qui coûtera $3, 500,000, et sera terminé en 1936. Et si la canalisation du Saint-Laurent de vait se réaliser un jour, ce projet lui-même ferait partie du vaste ensemble per mettant aux navires qu remontent le Saint-Laurent d'aller jusqu'à Duluth.

[manwalksintobar]

The only tourist in Havana turns his thoughts homeward //  Leonard Cohen

Come, my brothers, let us govern Canada, let us find our serious heads, let us dump asbestos on the White House, let us make the French talk English,

not only here but everywhere, let us torture the Senate individually until they confess, let us purge the New Party, let us encourage the dark races so they'll be lenient when they take over, let us make the CBC talk English, let us all lean in one direction and float down to the coast of Florida, let us have tourism, let us flirt with the enemy, let us smelt pig-iron in our back yards, let us sell snow to under-developed nations, (It is true one of our national leaders was a Roman Catholic?) let us terrorize Alaska, let us unite Church and State, let us not take it lying down, let us have two Governor Generals at the same time, let us have another official language, let us determine what it will be, let us give a Canada Council Fellowship to the most original suggestion, let us teach sex in the home to parents, let us threaten to join the U.S.A. and pull out at the last moment, my brothers, come, our serious heads are waiting for us somewhere like Gladstone bags abandoned after a coup d'état, let us put them on very quickly, let us maintain a stony silence on the St. Lawrence Seaway.

 Havana April 1961

[rabbitcruiser]

The Saint Lawrence Seaway, linking the North American Great Lakes and  the Atlantic Ocean, officially opened to shipping on April 25, 1959.  

[q-posts]

Sunday

A thankful heart leads to happiness. When we really pay attention, we are surrounded by many things we can be thankful for, the society we live in, the kindness shown to us by others. You will be able to find true happiness when you can see and appreciate these things, As spring slowly opens up to us, we can feel the newness in the air. Small buds are appearing on winter weary branches. There…

[cletusthurstonbeauregard]

all power to the people ✊🏽✊🏽✊🏽✊🏽✊🏽

[thequeenofsand]

Exterior Vinyl in New York

[allthecanadianpolitics]

When Cody Diabo recently learned that the bay restoration project on Kateri Tekakwitha Island was near complete, he took his family for a walk there to see its transformation from a dry, rocky shore into a marsh teeming with life. 

The island off of Kahnawà:ke, a Kanien'kéha:ka community south of Montreal, was once a small archipelago of lush, natural islands — but it became a single piece of land after sludge from the river and blasted rock was dumped onto the archipelago by construction crews building the St. Lawrence Seaway about 70 years ago. 

"For the first time coming to the island since I was a little child, I saw corn growing," Diabo, council chief responsible for the environment portfolio at the Mohawk Council of Kahnawà:ke, said at a news conference Wednesday announcing the completion of the nearly decade-long project to restore water flow in the bay and naturalize its surroundings. 

"To be able to see a substance that's dear to Onkwehonwe people and Kanien'kéha people — corn — growing here, where it was essentially barren for a while … that was just a sign that we were doing something really good." [...]

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Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[celtics-art-portfolio]

I was recently commissioned to do a couple of labels for a company called "Lost Villages Brewery." The labels are known as "Paradise Lost" and "Captain James' Seltzers" respectively, and both are based on the history of the St. Lawrence Seaway and its sunken villages in Ontario, Canada (also for which the brewery is named). Both have slight alterations to them for the final product, but yeah. These were fun! My art is now on beer cans. Who would have thought it?

[southpacifictravel]

In 1957, as the rising waters of the St. Lawrence Seaway closed in, Christ Church (1837) was moved 20 km west to Upper Canada Village, an 1860s heritage park near Morrisburg, Ontario, Canada.

[aultsville]

Two appliqué projects I did about the St. Lawrence Seaway/The Lost Villages.

Top one is based on the Lost Villages Historical Society logo, bottom is based on a photograph by George Hickey taken in Aultsville, Ontario just before the flooding of the Seaway.

[writingcold]

Bound

AU Jake X Chris slash 

A/N: At the announcement of Mirador, and that first picture of Jake and Chris, my brain went to the following blurb. I have been working on an AU currently titled The Dead. This story is about soulmates that have been cursed to live apart - and at the time of story, they have lived many lifetimes apart. Within the story there are 6 versions of our Jake set in many different eras, just as there are 6 different versions of Maéva - the Y/N character. It has been so fun to write! But I am rambling. The point is, the following blurb is just ONE of the lifetimes that Jake has across 400 years. I was only going to share it with a few friends, but then @katuschka, @its-interesting-van-kleep and @thewritingbeforesunrise really have thrown their support behind me and this blurb. The rest I’ve shared with - you know who you are - are such an amazing group, so I hope they enjoy the revisited blurb. I’ve cleaned it up a bit, polished it, honed it a little more. This will NOT be in the story proper, it’ll be mentioned, but not known to the main character. At least at this point, it is not. Our secret. And as always, thank you to @edgingthedarkness for listening to me carry on and on and on and on… and on about this story and being so patient with me over the mess that it is. 

***This is an 18+ story for adults only. This is a blurb of Yakov Petrov (Jake) and Christian Hertel (Chris Turpin inspired). It is an AU set in time when Michigan was voted in as a state.***

Content warnings: Sexual situations m/m, oral, unprotected sexual situations, a little angsty (of course, and loops back to the actual story), a touch of Yakov (Jake) being a brat.

Word count: approximately 2600

Journal Entry - Yakov Petrov, June 1862

     The commission had come in August of 1854 to survey the new territories of the northwest. Christian had reservations, but the money would be good, lodging and food was included. He had enough hands to set out like a grand jungle expedition into the wilds of the unexplored lands of the United States. I did not understand his reservations. To set out into the wilderness that only those native to the land had known? What adventure. What a privilege to see and paint and study. But, my Christian was the one who gained the commission, not I. It would be his decision to go and his decision to take whom he felt would be fitting to the project. Just because we shared our appetites with each other, did not mean that I would attend the expedition. 

     We had boarded the ship in Boston, May of 1855, that would take us first to New York, then up through the St. Lawrence Seaway, into Lake Ontario. We’d then follow the Niagara River to Lake Huron. From Lake Huron, we’d find ourselves on the Detroit River to finally push our way into Lake Michigan. Detroit would be our destination for a fashion. Christian had called it our last stop of frayed civilization before traversing into the untamed wilds of the north lands. 

     I will not be untrue - being aboard those ships brought me a joy from the core of my spirit, but a mournfulness as well. I felt this joy to be old, sunk down in the marrow of my bones and beyond me in a way that was confusing and best forgotten the moment my feet touched the land of Detroit. We were housed in what was considered a grand house of the region, but after such luxury in Boston and Philadelphia, I was finding myself holding my tongue from spoiled and rude comments. A tent in the grand garden of our townhome would have been more comfortable.

     A month of those conditions prepared us for the path before us. We had native guides and set out with a troupe of sixteen hands to carry and maintain our academic venture. Christian was a marvel in his organization of those men. He wanted to start at the northern point of Sault Ste. Marie. That meant more travel by water, which was fine. The commission demanded each step be documented - not just in paint and charcoal, but recording for scientific reasons, the flora and fauna, the animals, the geography. All of it was to be recorded and sent to Washington, DC, for study. That was to be our nature of work, and we would follow it to the letter.

     My foot touched the aged pier of Sault Ste. Marie and I felt an illness within that I could not explain. Christian wanted to send me home to Boston, I was so taken. I took to a bed in a passable inn and shook with a fright that I could not shake. It was in my blood. It invaded my breath. I sent Christian on with the promise that I would catch up if he were to leave me a guide. I was behind him by weeks, only, but in that time, my soul seemed to cry over the wild, windswept land that was this already old place. I found myself walking upon the grounds of a once great shipmaster’s house that overlooked the great lake of Superior. The French manor house that barely clung to its elaborate balconies, was a ruin. It was a ghost of memories that seemed to dance and toy with any and all who passed it by, eliciting the imagination of grand balls and fancy turns of women’s voluminous skirts. 

      It was on this scrap of field that I felt it for the first time, an ache that would go on to haunt me the rest of the journey. I set up my easel and painted what I saw: the town and the port beyond this desolate beauty that hurt my spirit for unknown reasons. Perhaps it colored my stroke a bit, leaving me with a melancholy piece that once set, was boxed and housed to make its way back to the capital. This ache was ever present as I finally was well enough to move across the peninsula to catch up with Christian. It was a dogged feeling that I knew this land as sure as I knew myself. Odd, as I never had been anywhere except the grand cities of the east coast.

     It was a reunion of quiet touches and catching up when I did finally reach the party. My Christian was always so enigmatic when it came to our relations. He might one day grasp me by my whole body and not let go without a laugh and caresses that were never hidden, while the next, may only be in the form of a clandestine brush of the back of his hand against my thigh. I did not mind. It kept me guessing and intrigued and returning to him for more. This reunion, however, he walked away from me as if upset. I followed him, calling his name like a wounded puppy might.

     I followed into the deep woods, where the light dappled on the ground as if fighting to penetrate with its goodness. I suddenly realized, goodness was not meant to see what he needed, nor wanted from me. His mouth crashed into mine with a carnal anger that left me breathless and needing more. No coherent words passed between us. Only desperate touches and demanding utterances graced us as he nearly tore my clothes from my body. His fingers knocked my hat from my head and his eyes stilled in absolute offense.

      “Damn it. Why did you cut it, Yakov?” he growled as he discovered my hair much shorter than when he had left me.

      He tugged it at the roots, pulling my head back to expose my throat to him. He ravaged my skin, leaving not an inch untouched. My man knelt in the black dirt and sucked me down, leaving me ruined and ready for him and only him to love as only he could love me. He kissed and lapped and ground his mouth on me until I was nearly weeping and close to orgasm before he clutched me with a kiss that was full of passion. He wrapped his hand around both of our girths and began to rub hard. Feeling his cock against mine was one of my favorite things, and to have him eye to eye with me, reading my face as he fed my need was near otherworldly. My love poured out on the air in my sighs and moans of pleasure.

      He turned me, helped me to find my hands on the gnarled bark of a tree. His mouth sucked at my shoulder with promises of love and adoration as his cock found my entrance. And he loved me. He penetrated me in a hard press that filled me with a desire that no one had ever given me. He loved me. Each in was demanding while each out was a caress and need for more. Yes. He loved me. And when we both reached a pitch that could no longer be staved off, we danced in ecstasy as our high crescendoed into a shared gratification. He held me and I held onto him in the dirt. Our skin was inflamed with joy and our words gentle towards each other. 

     My fingers tangled in his sun kissed golden hair and smoothed across the manicured mustache that resided over his lip. How many days had I woken to this face only to be so enraptured by it each and every time. And he looked upon me the same. His fingers in my dark brown threads, even though I had cut it quite short, and across the hair on my chin. Always with such love. Always with such care.

     We worked our way across spidery waterways. Through dense forests and broad meadows. One word was always on my tongue - beautiful. There was no green like it on the wind battered east coast. Surely, this virginal green was unlike anything on this fledgling continent. It was strong against the eye, yet the wind pushed it as if with a whisper of promise of what settling it would provide. Eagles, in grand mass, relegated in towering pines, while the deer were thick in numbers, grazed unaware of the dangers that were to come. Industry was waiting. It was our purpose to sell the dream of this ground to industry. Christian both hated the idea, but loved it for what riches it would bring to the region. Hated for it would surely be destroyed under the bootheel of man. Loved it, as he captured the most natural golden beauty through our work.

      We had been in the wilds for well over a month. We pushed our way south, sketching, recording, painting. Day after day brought something new to be cataloged. Something new to be puzzled over. But most of all, captured. We were capturing the spirit and nature of this land. 

      The cold came swiftly in this region. Our party was forced to choose - build cabins and wait out the harshness of winter, or try to rush to the south and east to Detroit before the ice bound up the land and winter there. Christian ordered for cabins to be built - we were to settle and capture a winter’s season in the new land. We were not the only ones in this region. A new village was chartered and was beginning to grow as the last of our timbers were set in place for our shelters. I spent hours sketching and painting - even putting in the men as they labored. Frankenmuth. They were going to call the village Frankenmuth, so I titled the painting as such.

      I knew hard winters. I knew winters where the sun seemed to extinguish itself for days on end and the ocean would lash at the shore in unrelenting undulation that was sure to tear permanently at the land. But this - this winter in this land of Michigan was beyond me. There were moments of crystalline beauty and desperate cruelty of storms that lingered. Christian laughed at my poetic rendering of what was around us, but it is what it was. Horrid. But beautiful. 

      The spring of 1856 was slow to thaw. Despite there being still snow on the ground, Christian and I were out, wrapped in heavy furs and easels in hand to sketch the landscape. It was midafternoon before I realized that he had put me into the picture he created. I laughed at him as he gazed at his work with an eye that I knew well. He was smitten with me, still. He had started to apply paint here and there, but he left it unfinished as my ministrations to him had become too blatant for him to ignore. My usual trick to get him to love me rather than paint me.

      On the eve of our resumed expedition, he held me with the lament of wanting me to be his forever. He wanted to marry me as he would a wife. He seemed so adamant and passionate about it. We were together, that was enough for me. 

       He became sullen and started to argue with me. He pulled away and it was as if the Earth was pulling away from the moon. He was unconsolable in the moment about how I was changing with this land. I was changing? How? He said to look at his drawing, how I looked to the land like it was my lover. I was baffled. He said that I would talk in my sleep about love. At first he thought that it was himself that was causing my midnight sighs and caresses. 

     “Unless my name is suddenly changed to Maéva, I doubt very much that it is I who is featured in your deepest dreams, Yakov,” he had argued.  

     “But if you’re angry about dreams, surely you see the absurdity of your argument,” I fought back, showing that I was totally unaware of what he was talking about.

      I smoothed back his hair, dragging my fingernails over that patch of skin just behind the shell of his ear. I watched as he quivered under my touch. I pressed kisses to his furrowed brow, cooing and whispering my love. I promised that I would be his husband and he would be mine in our hearts. It would be enough. I took his tongue into my mouth, sucking it hard enough to elicit a soft chirp. I relished the taste of his creamy skin, passing my mouth across the sparse, downy patch in the middle of his chest. 

      “I want you to quit cutting your hair,” he growled as I found his cock with my lips. “Why do you cut it when it’s so pretty?”

       I pressed behind his ball sack hard as I slid my mouth up the shaft with a saucy pop. “Ever think it’s to make you upset with me, Chris?”

       His eyes pinched at the edges as I looked up at him, my chin coming to rest on his thigh. He trailed his fingers down my cheek. I knew what he wanted of me. I knew and so I took him into my mouth until I was downright slobbering. I spit into his entrance as he moaned loudly, egging me on. I wrapped my hands around his thighs to spread him enough for me to enter him. And we made love, face to face.  My eyes roved across his lean body, loving each turn of bone and stretch of skin. The way his mouth stretched with pleasure, and how the head of his cock peeked out as he stroked himself tightly as I moved with confidence within him. I bent, his thighs pressed hard around my hips as I lapped at the precum on his head with a moan of satisfaction. The hard inhale of breath and I knew one more trick to send him into another plane. I swirled my tongue over the head as I pressed in, snapping my hips into his rump. My fingers dug at the meat of his flanks as I dragged my tongue over the softness of his belly, circling across his nipple before sinking my teeth into the flesh of his shoulder to unravel each other until we were a complete mess.

       In the darkness, he slept well as I held him close. I listened to his breathing for hours. It was shame that kept me stirred. He was not wrong about how this land was claiming me. This woman - Maéva -  was haunting me in my slumber. The meaning of it was so blurred. It made me hold to him all the tighter. It was him that I loved. I belonged with him. He understood me best. Yet, this woman was a memory of deep time. She belonged to another time, another existence. I knew it deep in my bones, just as I had felt the joy of crossing all those rivers to come to this land. But my heart was cleaved in two, wasn’t it? A fractured shard that belonged to one that was not in my time of now. It was that piece that I could never surrender to my Christian. And he was mine. I pressed my face into the mass of golden hair to allow his perfume to swell around me. He was mine.

I hope you liked my tangent here into Yakov’s life. It was such a tangent that strangled me, and continues to play in my brain even though this is pretty much it for Cake Lane in this story. I’m not sure when The Dead will be ready to go. Life has been so busy, making writing time sporadic, but I’m getting there. I will be putting out a new tag list sign up when we’re closer to release, but for now, this will remain tag-less as it's just a one off. Until then - happy reading, happy writing, happy creating!