Jack and I were together a full year before I talked him into a vacation. You see, he was self-employed so if he wasn’t working, he wasn’t covering his overheads. I convinced Jack that a few days away to celebrate our October birthdays and see the fall colours wouldn’t kill him financially.

So after Jack finished his workday on October 2, 2010 I picked him up at his shop for our northern odyssey. He had accomplished the near-impossible by clearing out enough of his 1800 sq ft workspace to leave his truck there and we loaded up my Echo with a few things - and Kora, his dog.

Kora had started out as a member of a household with Jack’s second wife and ended up with me. But we were in that in-between stage and while she and I had met a couple of times, we had a mutual wariness: who was this bitch and what was she doing with my man? Did I mention she was a Boxer weighing in at 60 pounds, with an impressive underbite that only her besotted owner claimed to add beauty to her fierce looks? To most, she was a little intimidating. Her presence on our road trip wasn’t a surprise to me that day, but a week or two before, I had expressed concern about the situation.

“But what about accommodation, Jack? Will Kora be allowed?”

“Of course,” which was code for ‘you’ll need to make sure it’s ok because I’m just going to arrive with her.’ Jack was an easier-to-ask-for-forgiveness-than-permission sort of person.

So I made sure we had dog-friendly accommodation arranged and off we went.

Our first stop was the 300 sq ft lakeview cabin at Glenn Burney Lodge on Georgian Bay just outside Parry Sound. We’d taken snacks and drinks for two days and nights of straight up R&R. After an evening of wine, chips, and TV, I returned to bed from my evening ablutions to find Kora snuggled in with Jack.

“Ok this isn’t going to work.”

“She’s used to it.”

“Sorry, she’ll have to be on the floor.”

And so we started the night with her beside the bed. By midnight, she was on the end of the bed, and by morning, we three snored, heads in a row, on the pillows. The pattern was established, the farm girl in me eclipsed.*

We three enjoyed the brilliant sunshine that accompanied us north and across on the trans Canada and finished our tour on Manitoulin Island. We saw a sign for Bridal Veil Falls and decided to check it out. As we approached the falls on foot, Kora strained on her leash, Jack strained to unleash her, and I restrained Jack. We rounded a bend to find a series of shallow pools thick with chinook salmon, some dead, some dying, and occasionally, one struggling in a futile attempt to jump up the falls. Kora was transfixed by these playthings flopping in the shallows. Against the better judgment of the crowd, Jack released her shackles and she frolicked with the salmon, but she didn’t attack. She seemed to know they were not a worthy adversary, weakened as they were.

As the season ends for salmon and their run entertains people on my Humber River walk and across the province, we need to be like Kora - respectful of their plight, applauding the few that leap the next level of our river systems or find their way through fish ladders. I look at the people fishing not far from the weirs, where you can see the fish gathering from the shoreline above, and I wonder about the ethics, or indeed the challenge, of fishing in these circumstances. But then I’m not a fisher. Is it any more exploitative than us - or Kora - being so fascinated by them?

But I never watch the run without thinking of Jack and that first vacation, 14 Thanksgivings ago.

Jump, salmon, jump!

* When we all moved in together a year later - 2 cats, 2 dogs, 2 humans - I had a no-dogs-upstairs rule to keep my cats safe. This trip was the genesis of that plan.

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