I felt like a stranger on Clifton Hill, standing behind a wooden booth positioned near the driveway entrance to Niagara Clifton Motor Inn. Glass-encased photos highlighted the places tourists would visit on Louie’s bus tour: Spanish Aero Car, Floral Clock, Niagara Gorge, Whirlpool Rapids and, of course, the ultimate wonder, Niagara Falls. Between the American and the Canadian Falls, our Horseshoe was the bigger of the two. Nighttime photos showcased the light pageantry, rainbow illuminations of the tumbling water.
Horseshoe Falls was ours and would always be ours. Rich Americans couldn’t take it away from us the way they’d taken prime beachfront property along our Lake Erie shoreline with their summer cottages as big as houses, leaving locals with measly strips of public beach. Once the w
