On the terrace in Venice

This morning, for the first time since arriv­ing in Italy, I sat on a terrace overlook­ing the Grand Canal and felt like a writer again. The waters churned with a variety of boats — vaporet­tos ferry­ing passen­ger to and from the train station, service trans­ports hauling every­thing from cement to fresh produce, luggage of depart­ing tourists, lumber and cases of supplies for hotels. This early in the day, no gondo­liers plied the waters, but the canal was filled with the constant hum of motors.

I thought of my father, who was raised in south­ern British Colum­bia in the heart of an Italian neigh­bor­hood in a smelter town. He would have either loved or hated Venice. I can hear his voice in the shouts of the boat captains and gondo­liers, see his thick forearms in the muscled men who work the boats, and recall his love of genoa salami and fatty slices of mortadella commonly found in the tratto­rias and pizze­rias of Venice.

I think of how my labourer father would have dismissed the privi­lege of the old Venit­ian families who still live in the sinking palaces that line the canals and how his sympa­thies would lie with those who earn their living with their physi­cal labour, not ones like me whose skills rely less on their bodies than their minds. I suspect my father would see my as lazy and undeserv­ing of the leisure time I have created for myself. But no matter.

The canals of Venice belong to men. Men with great adept­ness who steer long vessels into narrow passages, who use their strength to lift people in wheel­chairs in and out of boats, to work all day lifting stone tiles from one point to another, or propel their non-motorized craft filled with tourist along narrow channels, ducking under low bridges, using their feet to push off ancient brick walls, who shout back and forth with their comrades in their dialect. Working men. Men like my father.

No Venet­ian women pilot boats, but today I saw a plaque commem­o­rat­ing Elena Lucret­zia Coronaro Piscopia, who in 1646 became the first woman in the world to earn a univer­sity degree. Places like Venice, if their are any, have a tremen­dous sense of heritage and go to great length to commem­o­rate individ­ual achieve­ment. The memory is long and from thousand year old basil­i­cas to plaques on the walls of build­ings, there is celebra­tion of individ­u­als and families who contributed to the creation and sustain­ment of this most anachro­nis­tic and improb­a­ble place.

– Posted from my iPad

Location:Rio Terrà dei Sabbioni,Venice,Italy