JOSE MARIA HEREDIA

Plaque at Table Rock, near the brink of the Falls, Niagara Falls.

The plaque reads: “To the Niagara from the Cuban people, October 1989”. Heredia (1803-1839) was exiled in 1823 for penning his first Cuban revolutionary poem The Star of Cuba. Although banished officially to Spain for agitating for Cuban independence, Heredia continued to work for Cuban freedom. In 1831 he was sentenced to death in Havana for “criminal involvement” in a conspiracy for Cuban independence. He died in Mexico at the age of 35.

While in exile, he visited Niagara Falls and wrote his famous “Ode to Niagara”, which was first published 1825. In 1827 William Cullen Bryant was the first to translate it into English. Lines from the poem are inscribed on the plaque.

A definitive book about Heredia, Torrente Prodigioso: A Cuban Poet and Niagara Falls, has been written by Keith Ellis, a professor of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Toronto. He regards Heredia’s poem about Niagara as the best that has been written about the Falls. While respecting Bryant’s translation written in another time, he submits a new translation more attuned to the language of our times. On the occasion of the unveiling of the plaque the outstanding Cuban poet Eliseo Diego attended. Leading Canadian poets sent messages of tribute. Officials of the Niagara Parks Commission were in attendance, as well as members of the Canada-Cuba Friendship Association.

An earlier plaque was erected by the Cuban Boy Scouts Association, with the following text:

JOSE MARIA HEREDIA, CUBAN POET, EXILED PATRIOT, THE SUBLIME SINGER OF THE WONDEROUS GREATNESS OF NIAGARA FALLS. The Cuban Boy Scouts, on the occasion of the world jamboree at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada. August 18, 1955.