In April,  as preview performances begin,  Shaw Festival rehearsals usually take place in the afternoon and evening.  This leaves mornings free for taking the dog to the beach to look for signs of spring.  After days of wind and storm, the calm waters of the lake are busy with waterfowl.  One morning I saw a flock of mergansers, with their fashionably spiky hairdos, dipping and diving just off the shore.  Four or five males were escorting a single female.  Occasionally a male would scissor his long beak straight up in the air, while simultaneously pushing the middle of his neck down towards the water. This cool modern dance contraction was accompanied by cries of excitement. All the agitation was too much for the more sedate female, who suddenly disappeared beneath the water without a ripple.  Immediately each male followed suit, and the lake was calm for 15 or 20 seconds.  One by one the males popped into view like corks, in a loose cluster 5 or 6 yards across.  But where was the female?  A few seconds later, she appeared 20 yards from the males, swimming strongly “out to sea”, north towards Toronto.  One male spotted her almost immediately, and skittered across the water like a skipping stone to catch up.  The others followed, more gently.  Was he the favoured suitor, or just the most aggressive one?

Another morning, an arrowhead of cormorants shot past me, red beaks bright against their black bodies, against the backdrop of  the dark water and sunny sky.

Along the beach the first flowers are like small dandelions on red fleshy stems. In the sun they stand out against the the browns and grays of sand and clay.  On gray days they close, and there is a mental “time slip” back a week or two, to when the last of the ice and snow still diminished along the shore.  This year that coincided with the lifting of the ice boom on Lake Erie.  It’s an amazing sight annually in NOTL — a parade of ice floes filling the river and floating far out into the lake, even, as in this year, being driven ashore to restore winter’s dominion for a few last days.  Longtime residents say you can feel the drop in temperature as the ice moves  through.  This year, two or three spring snows, dusting the ground in the morning and melting away by noon, seemed to accompany the passage of the ice.

The physical labour of walking the beach at these times, sinking into the wet sand and smaller stones, clambering over fallen trees and driftwood logs, seems to stimulate creative thought.  Many a conception of character or story has come to me on these rambles — not always ideas that remain viable, but always another exploration, another consideration, another possibility found, and handled, and kept or discarded like an oddly shaped stone or colourful bit of beach glass.  One way or another, it all ends up on stage . . .

I wonder whether any of our blogs of last season achieved Internet liftoff?  Did anyone see any of our 2008 efforts?  Please let me know . . .                                                                                          ShawGuy Bannerman