My parents honeymooned at Niagara Falls. I have a photo of them leaning against the scrolled metal guardrail that covers large sections of the walkways along the falls and gorge, my dad in a dark suit, my mom in a matching skirt and jacket with a pretty blouse, smiling for the camera. Despite all of its kitsch and over-development, the Ontario side of the Falls is still pretty stunning, if you know where to look.
My family moved down to the Niagara Peninsula when I turned eight years old. For my birthday, my dad took us all to see the Falls, which were a big deal (and still are). It was a beautiful spring day, and afterward we had ice-cream cake, a really popular treat at the time.
The city of Niagara Falls has been famous for a variety of things over the decades – the Falls themselves, of course, and the crowds that have always clogged the streets in the summertime; the location of one of Marilyn Monroe’s films, Niagara (1953); the Skylon Tower, opening in 1965 with its revolving restaurant (kinda cool); where Christopher Reeve’s Superman saved a kid who’d fallen over the guard rail and bemused Lois Lane in Superman II (1980); the myriad stunt performers, from people trying to survive a trip over the Falls in all manner of contraptions (all the residents in the region thought they were nuts), to Nik Wallenda completing a high-wire walk across.
There’s something about the Falls that seems to make visitors lost their common sense. Our modern curse is all the tourists who decide they need to climb over the guard rail, needing to be rescued at great expense when they fall into the Gorge.
As a teenager growing up in the area, we were all used to the Falls as a famous attraction and often took it for granted, but it had the best entertainment around for restless youth. After exhausting the somewhat cheesy museums (like Ripley’s Believe It or Not) on Clifton Hill (the original tourist face of the city), the other options were the Skylon Tower, and the bars.
The view from the top of the Tower was nice enough, but it was the shops at the bottom that fascinated me. They were as ‘exotic’ as our region had at the time, and I loved browsing. There was a pervasive aroma of lavender, which I’ve loved ever since, and in another shop featuring imported goods, I bought a teak cane carved with a snake’s head as a gift for one of my boyfriends.
An eclectic selection of bars dotted the downtown section. The Rathskeller was a popular place if you wanted lots of noise and company, but if you were looking for something sophisticated for a date, with a Vegas lounge kind of vibe, you might have gone to the Thunderbird Room in the Fallsview Hotel. There was a good bar called the Sundowner on a road leading into the Falls, with live performers. (It still has live performers, but they remove all their clothing now.)
For those of us lucky enough to live in proximity, we’ve long been able to go border-hopping at our whim (except during the COVID pandemic) – shopping, restaurants, some great bars for the more…adventurous…of us. Our high school graduation featured a Ball (in tux and long white gowns) at a place overlooking the Falls now called Queen Victoria Place. At the time the main level was called The Refectory, and at 17-18 years old, we all felt very glamorous in our finery sipping cocktails and standing on the balcony to watch the night-time illuminations. Once the main festivities wound down, our grad class (those whose parents had agreed to let us stay out all night) headed out in several directions to continue partying. The car I was in spent over an hour across the border trying to find a famous bar somewhere along mostly empty dark roads between Niagara Falls NY and Buffalo. We finally gave up and returned to Canada to find one of the house parties going on. The night wrapped up with a 6 a.m. breakfast at our school, where we celebrated our transition to adulthood, then went home to let our parents nurse us through some hangovers.
The traffic across the four border bridges (three in Niagara Falls and one in Fort Erie) has always gone both ways; we have a very friendly relationship with our American comrades on the other side of the Niagara Strait (it’s actually a strait, not a river). My hubby and I continue to go ‘over the river’ on many occasions to watch football and baseball games, or to attend music concerts. On July 4th many Canadians gather on our side of the strait to watch the fireworks across the water.
Niagara travellers have the option of flying out of Buffalo International Airport, which is very handy when visiting parts of the U.S. and southward.
We’re shielded from Buffalo’s intense winter weather by the influence of Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, although the town of Fort Erie does get some of it. However, we shared in the ‘Great Power Outage’ of 2003.
That was a strange few days. I was at work at Niagara College in the late afternoon, about a half-hour from finishing for the day, when all the power went out. That wasn’t in itself an unusual occurrence; there was a hydro pole at the intersection where the campus sits in the town of Niagara-on-the-Lake that for some reason seemed to be a magnet for big trucks to bang into. I continued working on whatever I could that didn’t involve my computer, but a few minutes later our divisional director came into our office and told us to go home – the campus was being closed down. That got our attention, but we weren’t going to turn down a shortened work day.
On the drive home, all the traffic lights were out near the campus, so it was clearly a significant outage, but it wasn’t until I arrived in my home city that I realized how massive it actually was. Reports began coming in on the 4:00 p.m. news on my car radio about more and more locations, and all the power was out where I lived as well, in the entire city. I’d been heading for our nearest grocery store to pick up a few things, but had no cash on me to buy anything, and diverted back to my house.
We managed to save most of the food in our refrigerator and freezer, and cooked our meals on the backyard grill while we tried to stay cool without air-con in August, typically our hottest month. We listened to news on the radio, where every power facility from Ohio to southern Ontario flung blame at each other. We were indignant that in Niagara Falls, where our major power plant is located, hotels and casinos were taking advantage of what power the city had to light themselves up, while the majority of our region were sweltering and could barely cook a meal.
Our power was out for about 3 days. We managed to survive. All in all, over 50 million people in eight U.S. states and a large swathe of Ontario were affected. It was the largest blackout in North American history.
Casinos and enough wineries to sink us if our Great Lakes were prone to flooding have changed the landscape considerably since I was a Singapore Sling-drinking teenager. Niagara Falls has become both more kitschy and more refined. One of the lesser-known facts about Niagara Falls is its association with Nicola Tesla, who brought alternating current to our grand old power plant. The original plant was opened up to tours a few years ago, and celebrates one of the great heritages of the city with a terrific light show and very cool shop.
My favourite place to visit is the Botanic Garden, which is really beautiful and not very touristed. I discovered its appeal during our first COVID lockdown when I just needed to get out of the house for a while. Driving along the winding Niagara Parkway that hugs the lower section of the Niagara Strait, I found the Garden’s gate wide open. The Butterfly Conservatory inside was closed, as were other indoor attractions, but anyone was free to wander the Garden’s lawns and many paths. It became my sanity-saviour when I needed fresh air and a change of scenery, or when our new neighbours were driving me crazy. I still go there often to recharge my serenity.
Eclipse mania has been remarkable over the past month, arguably to be laid at the door of National Geographic when it placed eclipse-viewing in Niagara Falls in its list of Top 20 Travel Experiences for 2024. Hotels booked up quickly at grossly-inflated prices, and some of the hotels weren’t honouring bookings made earlier at normal prices. The Regional Council decided to declare a State of Emergency, and residents were told to stock enough supplies to survive a blizzard. COWs, aka cells on wheels (portable mobile cellular sites) were brought in to the area to manage an expected heavy load on local cell towers. The media in southern Ontario reported anything and everything associated with the coming event, from whether pets would be safe (yes) and if birds were going to fall out of the sky (no).
The frenzy wasn’t nearly as bad as feared. My hubby and I stayed away from Niagara Falls, but from photos in the media the crowds weren’t overwhelming. But what a lot of tourists seemed to be unaware of was our ridiculously variable weather, which can turn from sunny to stormy on a dime. Weather reports leading up to April 8th were gloomy, and the day dawned full of clouds. My brother, who lives in Waterloo outside the totality, had his skies clear in time to witness the entire progression from start to finish, while here in Niagara we scowled at the persistent greyness over our heads.
My hubby and I had made a last-minute decision to go for a drive, trying to find any opening in the cloud cover. Abruptly I spotted the eclipse just before totality, and we pulled over with fingers crossed. Finally, perhaps with intervention from On High, all of us hopeful Niagara viewers got enough tiny breaks in the heavy clouds to see the totality at 3:18 p.m., a flash of the Diamond Ring, and the remarkable darkness that descended, making all the street lights come on and the birds raise a ruckus for a little over 3 minutes.
As the eclipse waned, the clouds began to part, and by 5 p.m. our skies were completely clear and the sun was shining mockingly. It was very annoying. Nevertheless, for anyone outside paying attention, one of the most famous locations of totality in the world was able to witness just a bit of a great historic event.
There will always be a certain magic around Niagara Falls and outwards, and a lot of attractions to amuse visitors, from gardens (the Centennial Lilac Garden is also lovely) to picnics along the winding Strait to golf courses to fireworks and Christmas lights. My recommendation is to visit in late September to October, when the tourist crowds have thinned and the weather is crisp and sunny. In October the trees that line the gorge carved by the Niagara Strait change colour, creating a gorgeous backdrop to the greenish waters flowing between them.
There are numerous fall festivals to enjoy, farm markets full of fresh fruit and pumpkins, lots of wine and artisanal distilled spirits to sample, some good restaurants, the famous Shaw Theatre, two haunted forts and an abundance of beautiful drives.
Overrated attractions: the helicopter ride (expensive and too short to be effective); a plethora of cheesy souvenir shops; most of the restaurants clamoring to be ‘experiences’ as opposed to just serving good food.
For those of us who live in the vicinity, we watch all the craziness from a distance and enjoy the benefits as we can.