Lynne Heasley

I grew up near the Niagara River which connects Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, punctuated by the escarpment that creates the magnificent Niagara Falls. Just before my teen years we moved the length of Lake Erie to Metro Detroit. If I drive east for an hour through heavy traffic I will reach the St. Clair River, which begins at the southern end of Lake Huron and becomes the Detroit River.

Both the Niagara and St. Clair rivers have a long history of industrialization along their banks, with chemical pollution and waste impacting the river and those who live along the river. I remember visiting Niagara Falls and seeing the brown foam along the river banks. Manhattan Project waste was dumped in my hometown’s dump not far from the river, and Love Canal was a short jaunt up the road. The long history of industry along the St. Clair River includes lumbering, paper mills, and Canada’s ‘Chemical Alley.’

A few years back, prepandemic, we took an overnight trip to Port Huron, Michigan on the St. Clair River. My husband’s family came from Canada to settle there; in 1920-21 his great-grandfather worked for the Morton Salt mine. We had breakfast at a restaurant with windows to the river and after we ate we walked along the shore, passing fishermen casting their lines off the riverside. At the Ft. Gratiot lighthouse we watched the passing of the largest on the Great Lakes, the Paul R. Tregurtha.

The purpose of our trip was to donate a family heirloom New Testament from my husband’s family. The book dated to the early 19th c, perhaps 1830, and was given to my husband’s great-great-grandmother by a Native American, John Riley, whose name appears in the history books. He and his brothers were sons of an American father and Native mother, and their grandfather is a distant ancestor of my husband’s. The Riley brother aligned with the Colonists in the French and Indian War, and acted as translators for pivotal Michigan treaties.

The 1819 Treaty awarded John Riley land in what is now downtown Port Huron, land that was taken away in the 1836 treaty when Michigan became a state. Riley disappears from the history books after this time.

We meet with the Bluewater Indigenous Alliance and turned the New Testament over to the museum for display as a local, Native American artifact.

I thought of the people we met that day as I read The Accidental Reef. The native bands have fished the St. Clair River since time immemorial. The Europeans that claimed their ancestral land used the water for lumbering and paper making and chemical making and salt mining. Now, the fish in those waters carry the chemicals we have dumped into them, and Michigan suggests we eat no more than 8 walleye fish a year. In effect, the native population’s food supply has been poisoned.

Once, the lakes teamed with sturgeon, a species that has been around since the dinosaurs, a slow growing and long living critter of nightmare proportions and armored with plates. Once, they were so thick in the St. Clair River that fishermen just clubbed them on the head. They were fished for their flesh and for their roe to make caviar. We thought they were gone. But they were found spawning on an ‘accidental reef’ created in the St. Clair River.

Heasley explains the threats to the Great Lakes: diversion through the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal which lowers lake water level and gives invasive species like Asian Carp an entry into Lake Michigan (‘protected’ by an underwater electronic fence); the Welland Canal through which international ships pass, bringing invasive species; the threat of diverting the water to water insecure areas; the aging Enbridge oil pipeline that crosses the Straits of Mackinac, a disaster waiting to happen. (A 2010 Enbridge leak in the Kalamazoo River was one of the two worst inland spills in US history.)

Heasley’s Harper’s Index inspired list of facts is chilling to read as she shows how over time humans have taken the abundance of American resources and decimated it for short-term economic interest. Trees. Salt. Sand. Iron.

One example is the sand mining of Lake Michigan ancient coastal sand dunes for industrial use. In 1976 the Sand Dune Protection and Management Act was passed, but mining continued. Sand ranks 2 in global consumption of natural resources, used for solar panels and computer chips and fracking and industry. Entire sand dunes have been carted away. Good Morning America viewers voted The Great Bear Sand Dunes as America’s most beautiful place. We love our sand beaches. And yet, we car the sand away for industry.

Lynn Heasley has written an entertaining and informative book on the St. Clair River and the Great Lakes.

I received a free galley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.… (meer)