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One of the “musts” while in the Toronto area is a visit to the world famous Niagara Falls. It is only a one and a half hour drive from the city center of Toronto to the Falls, and I can tell you, it is worth the trip. Today was the third time in my life I saw them, and I was still as impressed as the very first time 21 years ago. Back in 1678, a French Father Louis Hennepin was looking for a route to the Mississippi River. Along the way, he became the first European to see what is one of the greatest natural wonders in the world. Niagara Falls was first settled by the Seneca Indians hundreds of years before the Frenchman would arrive.

The Falls were formed over 13 thousand years ago when glaciers retreated from this part of Ontario. In their lifetime, the Falls have retreated over 11 kilometers, and one day in the very far off future, this site will be little more than a river’s rapids. Niagara carries over 20% of the world’s fresh water, flowing from four of the Great Lakes. Travelling over 65 kilometers an hour, the water’s speed and huge volume (dropping 154 million liters of water every single minute on their journey downstream to Lake Ontario!) has immense erosive power. The brink of the Falls moved up to three meters every year until twentieth century engineering intervened to slow the rate down to only thirty centimeters every ten years.

If you are looking to get very, very wet, but you want to come up close and personal with the Falls, there are two ways to do so. You can either jump on a little boat called “Maid of the Mist”, or you can go on the “Journey Behind The Falls”. Over 12 million tourists visit the Falls each and every year, and I was told this afternoon that more film is sold at Niagara Falls than anywhere else in the world.

The Falls consist of two main drops, the American Falls entirely on the U.S. side of the border and the more spectacular Horseshoe Falls on the Canadian side. In 1901, 63-year old school teacher Anna Taylor became the first person to go over the falls in a barrel and survive. Not all who have tried this curious feat over the years have been so lucky and obviously, today this stunt is illegal. However, today 49 years ago, the only person who went unintentionally over the Falls and survived was young Roger Woodward. After a boating accident on July 9th of 1960, this seven-year-old boy was swept over the Falls wearing only a life jacket and a swimming suit. The crew of the Maid of the Mist II rescued Roger pulling him unharmed from the churning water. Roger’s seventeen-year-old sister was pulled from the river above the Falls by two onlookers, and the driver of their boat, Jim Honeycut, lost his life in this tragic event.

Somehow, during the settlement and development of Niagara Falls, it became known as the “honeymoon capital of the world” and to this day, tens of thousands of newlyweds still flock to the Falls to celebrate their nuptials.

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