Bizarre things seem to happen to me when I am traveling alone. Seldom when I am with others. Regularly when I am alone. It’s like God gets bored and needs a bit of a chuckle, and next thing it’s on me.
En route to Claggett Reloaded, I rented a car at the Hamilton airport to drive to Rochester. I had a bit of extra time so I stopped at Niagara Falls [Canadian side] where I had to pay $5 for a danish at Starbucks. Pouring rain/sleet, freezing cold, which caused the falls to create a lot of steam/vapour and so the view of the falls wasn’t entirely breathtaking. But maybe I was just sore about the danish. One disappointment, though, no one kissed at the falls, not when I was there at least. I looked all around for kissers, no one looked like they were even thinking of kissing. The NF tourist authority should get a government grant and hire young attractive people to stand there and kiss – could be a great summer job. Probably get a lot of applicants.
I’m still okay time-wise, I tell myself, as I hike back to the car. I get in, cold and smelling of wet wool, and I set off to find the Rainbow Bridge that leads to the USA [a bridge not, I hunch, named in honour of gay folks]. But it’s road construction everywhere and muddy detours and reddish brown muck covers the rented Malibu so it looks like I’ve been doing an off-road rally [shoulda paid the extra $10 to get a jeep liberty]. Seems a disproportionate amount of the NF municipal taxes have gone to road construction and none to signage. I start the process of zig-zagging my way to try to find the Rainbow Bridge [kind of a metaphor for life, eh?] and keep missing it somehow [another metaphor for life]. I’m male and therefore apparently genetically incapable of asking for directions. I decide to drive back the other direction, away from the Land-of-Opportunity until I find some construction-free road big enough to maybe have a Rainbow Bride sign on it and sure enough there is one and I pick up the trail again, a bit nervous because I used to be on a list of Canadians-we’re-not-sure-we-want-in-the-USA. But it’s all cool and the border guy even points me in the direction of the road to Rochester. Even with the delays, if I drive like I am from Toronto I can still get to Rochester in time, and because the Malibu has only km/hour and I forget how to translate kms to miles I figure I might have an excuse.
Just over the bridge into America I turn right and see a sign saying:: TOLL BOOTHS AHEAD. And realize I don’t have even a nickel of American money. I turn off toward some hotels and restaurants and park at Denny’s and run in, but Denny’s doesn't accept Canadian money. Not 500 yards from the border but the Denny’s doesn’t accept our money. Probably did before the Iraq thing. I ask where I might be able to change my money into American. He tells me to go to the Casino which is just down the street. I am United Church. Telling a United Church person to go to a casino is kind of like
telling a catholic to go to pro-choice clinic, or a Mennonite to an Army Surplus store. I am half running toward the casino, but before I get there I see this sign. A big yellow caution sign – the kind that tell you that deer or moose are crossing – but this sign warns: CHURCH. Sure enough it’s right in front of a church, though I am not sure at first what the danger is. . . I think it’s got to be tied to the casino. The I realized if you are on your way to a casino to blow your paycheque and you happen to notice a church without any warning, any prep time, you might think twice about what you are doing, about your kids needing clothes, etc. 

The warning sign is like the burning bush. I need to turn aside and see this strange sight. Then I look at the name of the church: St. Mary of the Cataract. Now that makes sense. She’s got to have cataracts to be blind to the casino, otherwise she might say something or do something about it, raise her voice against the gawdy greed, etc. Then I see poor Mary. Not only does she apparently have a problem with cataracts, she’s behind bars – while the casino guys run free. [I am not making any of this up]. And
right there on the sidewalk to the casino,there’s a box to give alms to the poor [easier than raising systemic questions about gambling]. And I’d like to think about all this but I am pressed for time, so I keep running toward the casino, enter it, and ask where I could change my Canadian money.
“Then you’re looking for redemption.” the woman says.
“Pardon?”
“You gotta go to redemption.”
“There’s redemption in this casino?”
“Uh-huh. Yesser. Just around the corner to your right.”
It was astonishing. At first blush a casino is not the kind of place you expect to find redemption – now I find out redemption is right around the corner. I went around the corner and walked, past all the zombie faces staring at their slot machines and looked and sure enough, there was the sign, right on the wall above a couple of cashier stalls: REDEMPTION. But there’s no light behind the redemption and there was no one in the stalls. Again my hopes were dashed. No redemption after all. But there were other cashiers not far away, and they kindly gave me some American money and I ran out, determined that I’d come back and take some pictures on my return.
Which I did. I bought a little disposable camera and took some wonderful shots of motel signs and other interesting things in Rochester, and I scurried off to take some pix of the caution sign, cataract Mary and above all the REDEMPTION sign. I kinda missed the other signs, however, the ones that said no cameras allowed. I snapped a picture of the redemption sign and the empty redemption booths and then turned to snap a picture of the slot machines right across from redemption when suddenly I felt a strong arm grab the camera from my hand and I was apprehended by the strong arm of a worthy Seneca Niagara Security Force official. He asked me what I was doing. “Photographing redemption.” I answered, “I found redemption in the casino and I wanted to take a picture of it.” Then I remembered that irony is a form of humour more popular in Canada than in the US, Alanis Morissette notwithstanding. He didn’t get the joke.
He said, ‘No you weren’t, I have official word that you were photographing the Wheel of Fortune slot machine.”
“You don’t understand I said, I am a Canadian pastor, the slot machine was just for contrast - it was opposite redemption. I just want to snap a picture of redemption go back to Canada.”
He was not to be moved however. “You can’t take pictures of that,” he told me. I should have known. Pictures mean you control something, capture something. You can't control redemption.
So I had to go buy another camera. Tempting as it was to try to get one more picture of redemption and run back out of the casino I figured it wasn’t worth getting arrested in the Seneca Niagara casino, and end up with a criminal record in the USA and get back on that list at the border again. Sometimes redemption slips through your fingers. Sometimes people grab it right out of your hands. This was one of those times.
But I found the Rainbow Bridge with no problem and the guy at Canadian customs didn’t even ask to see my ID. I must look tame now.