Eye to eye with
the mighty falls
A frozen Journey Under the Falls
capsized. Imagine the shock on the
faces of Maid of the Mist tour-boat
passengers when the boy bobbed up
to the surface—unhurt in the raging
maelstrom. But please don’t try to
recreate Roger’s adventure—it’s
potentially lethal and quite expensive,
carrying a fine up to $10,000.
At the swirling base of the drop,
the river is 52 metres deep—the same
height as the falls themselves. The
churning creates impenetrable walls
Niagara-on-the-Lake
Lake Ontari o
Virgil
N iag a ra
Rive r
St. Catharines
To Jordan
N iag a ra
G o rg e
Niagara Falls
N iag a ra
Parkway
38
wiNter 2016
CAA maNitoba
U.S.A.
Am er i c a n
Fa l l s
Br i d a l
Vei l Fa l l s
H or seshoe
Fa l l s
of mist, another heart-pounding
soundtrack, and even more reasons
to be awed. You won’t even begin to
notice the chill until ice starts to form
on your jacket.
Sure, Niagara Falls has its kitschy,
cheap-t-shirts-and-fridge-magnets
touristy side, but the jaw-dropping
wonder of the place explains why
it tops so many bucket lists. Even
Niagara’s Fury, the blatantly Disneystyle attraction in Table Rock Welcome
Centre, shakes you to your core with
its 4D recreation of the birth of the
falls. Grinning animatronic characters
deliver all the facts and figures, but the
moments you really remember come
after you’ve entered the darkened
special effects chamber.
For a few moments, you’re transported 12,000 years back in time to the
end of the last Ice Age, when glacial
melt water ripped through the earth,
creating the world’s most spectacular
waterfalls. Water surges up and over
walls that surround the room, the floor
shakes and shimmies, the temperature
drops 20 degrees, snow and rain fall
inside and the mighty roar of splitting
rock fills the air as the simulated birth
takes place—with you as midwife, in
the centre of it all.
Those waterfalls are never more
stunning than during the Winter
tourists: djwoody/istock; falls: Niagara Parks commissioN