On August 12th 1904, hundreds of people nervously watched a man step on to a wire going across Grand Falls, with its raging waterfalls and sharp boulders below. He was the first person to ever attempt to cross the Falls on a tightrope..
Falling off the wire spanning 400 feet across the gorge would have meant a 75 foot drop to certain death or debilitating injury.
The tightrope walker’s decision to become the first person to ever walk across Grand Falls was surprising, considering he had quit performing over a decade earlier.
According to early naturalist and historian William Francis Ganong, the Woolastoq people’s name for Grand Falls was Checanekepeag (pronounced Chik-un-ik’-a-bik) which means “The Destroyer.”
It got that name after a 200 strong Iroquois raiding party had captured a young Woolastoq woman named Malobiannah. They forced her to navigate them deeper into her peoples territory.
Malobiannah guided the invaders over the falls, killing all of them, sacrificing her own life to save her people.
Much later, in 1735, the British first named the waterfall “Great Falls.”
By 1839 when aristocratic traveler Sir James Alexander passed through, it was named “Grand Falls.” Though at the time there were only five houses and a tavern called Costigan’s Inn there, he noted “here will probably soon rise [a] city.”
Feats of daring, including tightrope walking across waterfalls, were a popular fad in the late 1800s and early 1900s. In 1859 Frenchman Charles Blondin became the first person to walk across Niagara Falls on a tightrope, watched by 5000 people in a widely publicized event.
The feat garnered a great deal of publicity for performers who tightrope walked – most of whom came from the circus world.
Joseph Van Morrell was the rather unusual combination of a circus performer and an Evangelical Pastor. He tried to get people to call him “Evangelist Joseph,” but everyone called him “Van.”
Van had grown up as a short, stocky kid in the woods of Eastern Maine. It’s not entirely clear what inspired him to teach himself ground tumbling and gymnastics as a child – unusual hobbies in rural Maine in the 1870s.
When he was a teenager his family moved to Massachusetts, and Van promptly joined a circus troupe. He took an instant liking to the high wire and flying acrobatic part of the circus, and was considered to have mastered the art of tightrope walking by the age of 17.
By 1885 he acquired a hot air balloon and parachutes. He launched a tour of aerial acrobatics all over the Maritimes, performing in small communities, but also selling out Halifax’s glitzy Lyceum Theater.
He spent the next five summers on tours, performing a variety of high wire acrobatics all over The Maritimes, New England, New Jersey, Quebec and New York City’s Coney Island. By this time his speciality was riding a bicycle over a tightrope high above the ground.
While touring he met Rosa Barnard, soon they were married. While she didn’t share Van’s enthusiasm for death defying acts, she gamely accompanied him on his touring for several years.
However, the world of hotel rooms, constant travel, not having a home to speak of, tent pegs and razzle dazzle weren’t really the life she saw herself living forever. Also, considering the danger involved, there really wasn’t very much money in the risky life of circus performing.
In 1890 Van decided to retire, and moved to Houlton, Maine to settle down. The Morrells had two children, Gladys and Clyde, and Van took up painting. Not artistic painting, but painting houses.
Van became rather passionate about painting houses, developing his own secret paint mixes, and dreaming of inventing a paint brush with a built-in handle to hold paint.
Despite years in retirement, Van abruptly decided to walk across Grand Falls on a tightrope.
August 12th and 13th 1904 were the dates of Grand Falls’ harness racing, and thousands of people would come from all over The Maritimes to watch.
That year the races would be particularly popular. According to The Daily Gleaner, an exciting new horse breed was coming to New Brunswick for the first time: the chestnut mare.
Van reached out to the organizers, making the case that being the first person to ever tightrope walk across Grand Falls would attract even more people. They agreed.
Van drove metal bars deep into the rock on either side of Grand Falls to hold his 400 feet of wire. They are said to still be there today.
At 2:30 on August 12th the sky was overcast, but not rainy.
The Daily Gleaner said that with thousands watching, he tentatively took a step out onto the wire..
Van began walking across the rope, but abruptly turned around and went back. Former CBC host Paddy Gregg would recount that the audience thought he lost his nerve, but actually the sun was actually in his eyes. He went to the other side to try again.
Halfway across, Van’s knees began to buckle and his body swayed.
He bent over and leaned his balancing pole on the wire, then, with the pole perpendicular to the wire, he rose in a handstand.
For 20 minutes he entertained the crowd with acrobatic stunts on the high wire above the Falls, before finally crossing to the other side – becoming the first person ever to walk across Grand Falls.
In the next three years after his Grand Falls triumph, tragedy struck the Morrells. Both of his children and Rosa passed away.
At age 40 Van remarried and moved back to Grand Falls where he lived for 20 years, painting houses, and fathering 7 children. While the Van Morrell family seem to have been active participants in Grand Falls civic life, including being in parades, picnics, groups and clubs, Van himself did not return to performing in Grand Falls.
However, in 1938, at the age of 72, and after having not been on a tightrope for 25 years, Van spontaneously decided to once again mount the high wire while at a State Fair in Nebraska.
While in the middle did a handstand.
