Ruth Buchanan
Al Buchanan
Cathy Marie Buchanan was born and bred in Niagara Falls, Ontario, the second of five children. Her father was a teacher, and her mother, a former teacher, was a homemaker.
She grew up in an area not all that different-looking than most 1960s suburban neighborhoods—though there were continual reminders that she was not living in just any town. The family made the trek to the falls whenever they had visitors—riding the Maid of the Mist, walking through Queen Victoria Park, gazing out over the Niagara Gorge—and regularly swam at Dufferin Islands, picnicked at Queenston Heights, and climbed in and out of the Niagara Glen, all favorite spots along the river. As a local she was, of course, privy to the never-ending stream of quirky Niagara Falls lore, stories like that of a high school boyfriend’s brother surviving the plunge over the falls in a barrel wearing only cowboy boots and a hat.
Cathy at 5
Cathy
She once attended a wedding reception at Queen Victoria Park Restaurant, overlooking the falls, and was taken aback when the out-of-towners spontaneously stood up and applauded the floodlights lighting up the falls. Her surprise, she believes, came from being unaccustomed to the reaction of people seeing Niagara Falls for the first time rather than from having grown immune to the beauty of her surroundings. This moment came during her first years living away from the falls—the years when she discovered it was possible to miss a river. On visits home she’d lengthen her running route from her parents’ house just so she could glimpse the gorge, and while away afternoons in the Niagara Glen. Buchanan attributes the deep reverence for nature that she shares with character Tom Cole to growing up with a natural wonder of the world in her own backyard.
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