There is a large misnamed and misunderstood sea that lies near the center of North America, commonly referred to as the Great Lakes. Its name is a reflection of a unique body of water for which the English language is totally incapable of accurately describing in any conventional sense; for they are no more lakes than they are oceans.

Consider that this locale has 20 percent of the world's fresh surface water, having a volume sufficient to cover the contiguous 48 states at a uniform depth of 9.5 feet; having a shoreline nearly as long as the total United States coastline including Alaska; sprinkled throughout by approximately 35,000 islands and large enough to create or alter regional weather. And yet we refer to these as "lakes." Lakes! This spectacular coast, where the surf runs from beyond the horizon and breaks upon broad sand beaches or crashes against tall cliffs and rocky headlands. This body of water, surrounded by land, which in the two decades between 1878 and 1898, the U.S. commissioner of navigation reported 5,999 vessels wrecked, of which 1,093 were total losses. This inland sea that has the fury to sink 12 ships and strand another 31 on rocks or beaches, with a loss of 248 sailors in one weekend alone during the month of November in 1913.

Great they may be, but the word "lakes" implies a grossly watered-down definition of what they truly represent.

Exiting the French River on Georgian Bay's east shore in July of 1614, the French explorer, Samuel de Champlain was amazed by the vastness of the body of water before him. Seeking the great Northwest Passage, his hopes of a shortcut to the Orient were instantly dashed as he leaned over the gunnel of his canoe and scooped up a handful of water, which he assumed to be seawater. The water upon his tongue was not bitter however, but rather clear and fresh..."sweet-like." They were not lakes at all, but rather a sea of freshwater, which he named "la Mer douce," the Sweet Sea.

In 1851, an American author wrote a novel that portrayed the life and conditions aboard an American whaler out of Nantucket. During a brief reference to the Great Lakes, he described, "They contain round archipelagoes of romantic isles, even as the Polynesian waters do; in large part, are shored by two great contrasting nations, as the Atlantic is...they are swept by boreal and de-masting blasts as direful as any that lash the salted wave; they know what shipwrecks are, for out of sight of land, however inland, they have drowned full many a midnight ship with all her shrieking crew." The author was Herman Melville, the book was titled Moby-Dick.

The Anglo-Saxons referred to the 11th month of the year as the winde-monath, for in November many a storm follows a track southward from polar lands into eastern North America.