Lake in the Shadow Project Outline

The vast, blue waters of Lake Ontario stretch out into the horizon. The lake not only provides drinking water to a large population of 4.5 million, but also a beauty and interaction that only a large body of water can. Lake Ontario interests me not only because of it’s size, but because of it’s beauty and cleanliness that has been tainted over the past 100 years by Canadians. Historically, Lake Ontario helped create and define the current borders of Canada. Yet somehow it seems to be a Lake in the Shadows of large urban development, still revered for it’s vastness, but somehow not as well regarded for it’s purity and health as it once was.
From 2009 thru 2012, I set out to explore our interaction with Lake Ontario’s shoreline because of it’s historical significance to Canada and because of its location near the countries largest urban areas. My goal was to find how we are currently treating the shoreline and if we are making better efforts to improve the lake’s water quality. To do this I set out to visit and photograph the Canadian shoreline starting in Queenston and ending in Wolf Island near the City of Kingston. I travelled a combination of overnight trips and day trips following the shoreline and attempting to visit as many public access areas as possible and as many other access points as I could find.
Why did I choose Queenston as a starting point? Although the village of Queenston is not geographically on Lake Ontario’s shoreline it historically was the terminus for freight traffic heading from Lake Ontario to the Upper Great Lakes. Being connected to Lake Ontario by the Niagara River it was a popular landing point for boats until the 1900’s. Because Canada’s and in particular Ontario’s borders were defined during this period I wanted to begin my journey in Queenston where some of this history was shaped.
The following list is almost a complete listing of the places I photographed along the shoreline: Queenston, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Fort Mississauga, Port Weller, Port Dalhousie, Jordan River, Grimsby Beach, Fifty Point Conservation Area, Confederation Park, Beach Strip, Hamilton Harbour, Burlington’s Spencer Smith Park, Burlington’s shoreline parks, Bronte Harbour, Oakville’s shoreline parks, Lakeview Park, Lakeside Park in Mississauga, Rattray Marsh Conservation Area, Port Credit Harbour, Lakeview Industrial Park. Etobicoke Creek, Colonial Samuel Smith Park, Humber Bay, Toronto Harbourfront, Toronto Island, Toronto Portland’s, Ashburnham Bay, Toronto Beach area, Bluffers Park, Rouge Valley, Pickering, Ajax, Whitby Harbour, Oshawa Harbour, Second Marsh, Darlington Provincial Park, Courtice Cliffs, Bomanville Beach, Newcastle Harbour, Port Hope, Cobourg, Haldimand Conservation Area, Presqu’ile Provincial Park, Wellington, Sandbanks Provincial Park, Picton, Little Bluffs Conservation Area, Loyalist Parkway, Bath, Kingston and Wolf Island. Some of these locations I have already discussed in previous blog posts and my goal with the list is to give you an overall scope of the project.
My photographic techniques were a combination of hand held and tripod photography. If possible I made ever effort to arrive on location before sunrise, but I fully adapted to whatever time I arrived on site, making the most of all types of light. The biggest challenge I had was hiking through the locations I had never been to, and finding the best vantage points for photography. This required a fair bit of legwork, but was also extremely interesting because of the exploration aspect.
The Lake in the Shadow project is all about the contrasts between good uses of the shoreline and the bad. The yin and the yang of our treatment of the environment will be illustrated with photos. In offering this approach I hope to strike a balance between beauty and environmental degradation. Photographers generally show one or the other (a beautiful landscape or a polluted landscape), which in my mind doesn’t afford a true documentation of the complete landscape. Mans effect on the landscape creates a real disturbance, yet there still are some wild places where nature is strong. Portraying both of these places allows me to better document the actual environment, as in many places along the Lake Ontario shoreline the two extremes are close to each other.
Today’s blog post is the first of four posts dedicated to documenting some of my experiences in photographing the Lake in the Shadow Project. The images presented are a small part of the complete project, which took three years to complete. In the upcoming weeks the Canada Photo Diary will discuss: Lake Ontario’s Geography and History, the problems with our Shoreline Interaction, and Pollution and Restoration issues. Please feel free to pass on your Lake Ontario experiences and any concerns you have about Lake Ontario, as it is my hope with The Lake in the Shadow Project to create a dialogue.