I was watching, for the fifty-third time, one of my favourite movies – Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, where a wealthy sheik with a deep love for fly-fishing, proposes the idea to Britain of exporting salmon from Scotland waters to the Yemen for sportfishing. The movie was adapted from a book of the same title, a political satire written by Paul Torday, his first novel, published in 2007 when he was fifty-nine years old. He died in 2017, and his family set up a Memorial Prize in his honour for authors, over age sixty, publishing their first book. Lessons in Chemistry written by Bonnie Garmus, won the prize in 2023 when Garmus was sixty-five, reaping international success with rights sold in forty countries. I like the idea of honouring those who come late to the game. But this is about fishing, not chemistry and… it got me thinking.
Many a work of literature uses fishing as a metaphor for life. For those who love being on the water with a rod hanging over the edge of a boat or while standing on shore, that connection makes perfect sense. Ernest Hemingway and his 1952 The Old Man and the Sea, a classic tale of enduring hardship, is just one such piece of literature. David James Duncan’s 1983 The River Why, a journey of self-discovery, is another. Our river is the star of On the Rainy River, written by Tim O’Brien, a short story in the 1990 collection The Things They Carried. There are countless others. What is it about fishing? Is it how water soothes the soul, is it the challenge of outwitting a fish who dances effortlessly below the surface, is it the patience and meditation with time spent in thoughtful consideration of all that has been and all that might be. Maybe all the above.
I would hazard a guess that most who grew up in Fort Frances, surrounded by fresh water, picked up a fishing rod and spent hours in the hopes of catching the big one. When I was very young, I pretended to fish in the creek that ran through our forest, the water wandering this way and that on its way to the river. I spent hours sitting on the branch of a fallen tree, my toes bare and wiggling in the cool water below me, a stick with a string attached to a rock dangling from my hand. It may not have made sense to anyone, but to me it was the quietest of pastimes, the towering trees overhead keeping watch and keeping me cool, my imagination holding me there. Farming doesn’t lend itself well to summer days of idle fishing, but there were a few times when my dad trolled the waters of Rainy Lake, his rod over the side of the boat. I was obligated to hook my own worm if I was fortunate enough to accompany him. I was my dad’s “hired man” and I couldn’t show my squeamish reaction. Eventually, putting a worm on a hook became a simple task, thank goodness. Sometimes I curled up in the bottom of the boat and read about the Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore while we floated in silence, my dad lost in his thoughts and me lost in my story.
Walleye season will soon be open. I can taste the shore lunches, can hear the fish sizzling over the fire and the shared tales of the big one that got away. What a blessing Rainy Lake and all the lakes within reach of Fort Frances are. Tina and I spent a summer as Deputy Conservation Officers, camping and fishing in the cool dark waters of the South Arm of Rainy Lake, soaking up the sun. Tina often played her recorder that I firmly believed lured the fish in our direction, the gentle sound floating out over the early morning water like a prayer. It was a time of unparalleled freedom, of fishing and imagining the possibilities the future might allow for. But mostly it was being in that precious moment, where nothing else mattered but friendship.
wendistewart@live.ca
