2025 has been the year of ice. For a month I’ve been longwalking everyday through High Park to where the Humber River meets the Toronto shore of Lake Ontario. It’s about 5 kilometers from my neighbourhood–The Junction Triangle–to the Humber Bay Arch Bridge.
I make the trip through High Park at dawn. Hoping to see some coyotes or other more nocturnal wildlife. For the most part though that pre-seven a.m. walk just means I’m on my own to a large degree.
Once I’m at the Snake Bridge, I can look down into the delta where the Humber enters the lake and see ice. In the last month that ice has taken many forms. Today the water was actually blowing in from the lake and up the river so there wasn’t a great deal of ice. When it’s windy the ice can’t typically form.
I stick to an area inside a breakwall that protects our city shoreline from the worst of what can be a very turbulent lake. This acts to calm the area so it has a chance to freeze.
I’ve seen some cool forms in varying degrees of winter weather, but the most remarkable by far was the whispering ice. I’ve made that term up, but it could easily be called smoke ice. Both terms are better than “ice lard” which seems to be a term related to this type of formation.
