Unquiet

Suspended over Gull Lake is a long cedar dock that juts away from the moss-filmed rocky shoulders of the shore. A scarred wooden rowboat is trussed at the bow to a rusted wharf ring. Dew-damp spider webs across the gunwales shiver in the breath of breeze. A bloated, cocktail-cherry sun pushes through a jagged cleft between the mountains. Shadowy evergreens matt the hilly cheeks of the Muskoka Forest like a weekend beard. My footfalls on the warming planks, though light and tentative, send shivers across the skin of the placid lake. Scent from the shady edge of the dock swirls over me – cedar, mud, the lavender I planted years ago. When I still myself and shut my eyes, the busy silence resonates against my eardrums. It’s five thirty in the morning in the middle of July and I’m all alone.

I turn my head towards a rustling sound at my back. There’s something under the red currant bush. I stand quietly, foggy breath swirling out of my mouth, wishing I’d worn my glasses. Finally, a pair of skunks waddles across the path leading from the cottage. They smell something and stop to look at me poised in the middle of the dock, then – perhaps because they, too, sense that I’ve lost track of my own importance - they amble, tails down, into the brush behind the boathouse.

The sun is that much higher when I turn back with a crick in my neck from motionlessness. The marshmallow haze coating the far shore is breaking up beyond the shallows, disturbed by the crowds of mouths of feeding fish. Further up the hill, round bales of fog tumble down the gravel wash, unraveling to nothing over the felled logs by the beaver dam. As I shake off the last clogs of sleep and give up on keeping my feet dry, I catch sight of the deeps beyond the diving platform warming to navy serge under the sunlight. Someone told me long ago – was it Frankie or Pa – that if you tilt your head to one side and half-way squint, the first ripples of the day look like fractures on the plate-glass water. It’s true; they do. Why can’t I remember who said that? It probably doesn’t matter.

The misty bits and all the hard edges of dark have burned off to golden air. A toilet flushes in the cabin. Up by the ridge at the end of the lake where the days begin, a red-tailed hawk coasts the thermals then plunges into the trees. There’s a scream, a momentary hush, then the marsh-quiet starts to crack under the catcalls of other wild things in the morning.

Amidst that smell of rotting leaves the earth is giving up its cool. Something mottled and sinuous glides around my right ankle and disappears under the dock before I can focus my eyes; a hare bolts for the trees from yesterday’s fire pit.

Screen doors slam. The sharp, high morning chatter of kids skittering across the night-cold kitchen floor cuts what’s left of the silence and I smell the fumes of perked coffee. A trio of crows argues over the broken carcass of a crab behind the old boathouse. The lake is alive with endless rags of glittering waves. I, too, will have another day.

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Why Mystery?

by Hyacinthe Miller • 14 July 2026

Ordinary people = engaging suspense

Gooooooaaaaaallll!

by Hyacinthe Miller • 2 July 2026

When people think about international sporting events, they often picture the action inside stadiums jammed with tens of thousands of screaming fans. Yet, some of the most memorable moments happen far beyond the first and last whistles. What I’ve seen in Mexico during a FIFA match, is entire towns transformed by watch parties in homes or bars, convoys of vehicles honking horns and waving flags from windows, and everyone out celebrating. We’re all wearing green shirts in honour of our Mexican football team and it’s amazing. It’s been a time when strangers become neighbours for a few unforgettable weeks. Walking through the streets at any time of day, you can feel the energy. Hawkers are selling Mexican themed team shirts of all kinds. Families bring their lawn chairs to the malacon to watch the match on a big screen television set up by the skateboard park. Before and afterwards, folks gather in the central square. A few weeks ago, I was on a flight from Toronto to Mexico City connecting to Guadalajara. Fans from all over the world were wearing team jerseys. There was such a happy buzz of pride and laughter. The man I sat beside was born in Mexico but hadn’t been back in forty-one years (he’d had a complicated life). He had tickets to games in Mexico City (CDMX) and Guadalajara. When we arrived in Guadalajara airport, there were two lines of people dressed in team colours greeting everyone heading out of the terminal. Music, chanting, dancing—I’d never seen anything like it. Last night on my way home from watching the game with a group of friends, there were no cars on the streets. It was eerily quiet. Even the dogs were silent. Yet, form every house I passed by on the way home, I could hear the game and cheers behind the curtains. When Mexico ended the game with a 2-0 win, then the celebrations spilled into the streets. Lots of cohetes being set off, cheering, and horns honking long after the match had ended. Everywhere you look, people are wearing team jerseys, interesting headgear or draping themselves in the flag. The sense of excitement is contagious. What makes the celebration especially memorable is the friendliness of the Mexican people. We saw lots of that hospitality offered in Tijuana to the Iranian team, whose exclusion form the US meant they had to fly out of Mexico for every match, and return afterwards. The Korean team will remember Mexican hospitality for a long time. In fact, there are lots of memes circulating that in nine months, there will be dozens of Korean Mexican babies born with names like Fernando Kim, Yoon Sun Lopez, Andreas Lorenzo Lee, Lourdes Maria Park. Especially in these troubled times, events like soccer with teams from around the world, remind us that competition can unite people and give them a break from political shanigans.

Unquiet

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