Lake of Two Mountains

Lake of Two Mountains, Arleen Paré's second verse gathering, is a representation of a lake, of a relationship to a lake, of a system of connections around a lake. It maps, tests and acclaims the riparian area of focal Canadian geology that lies between the Ottawa and the St. Lawrence Rivers.

The ballads depict this region, its challenged human existences and characteristic history: the 1990 Oka Crisis, Pleistocene movements and disengagements, the plume formed Ile Cadieux, a Trappist religious community on the lake's northern shore. As we are drawn into understanding of the lake and its environs, we likewise enter a many-sided interleaving of scene and memory, a reflection on how a place comes to occupy us even as we possess it.