LUMINATO THAW

Once again I return you to the beginning of summer, to June, boiling with activities. Once again I remember the wonderful LUMINATO

It is really hard to forget and I will return to it more than once.
And today I want to tell you about the magical event that took place on Dundas Square on June 8, the last day of this event.

I’ll start with the fact that I was out of town, 4 hours away from Toronto, and I was late for my shift. I had to give the car to my son, run into the subway on a line that was being repaired, put on a volunteer tennis shirt right in the subway car, and be right in front of the group captain at the square on time. I made it. I remember it well.

When I arrived at my shift, the acrobat’s performance was already underway. A large crane was hanging over the square, with an ice floe attached to it. This is a real ice floe from Antarctica, which was cut out of an iceberg or a large ice floe and delivered to this performance in a special container.

The weather was wonderful, no one except my husband said that rain was coming. But my husband was at home. And the atmosphere in the square was wonderful. There were a lot of people. Everyone was looking at the acrobat dancing on the ice floe and taking pictures of her. She was wonderful.

Although the auxiliary safety ropes held her, it seemed that she was sliding boldly and freely on this ice floe without fear or stress.
But the ice floe was still slippery.
And cold. It was a natural ice floe.
Water was constantly dripping from it, it was melting.
But the skill and experience of the organizers was that they took into account the volume of the ice floe, so that it would be more than enough for the entire performance.

Toronto is very busy with tourists at this time. A double-decker tour bus was dropping people off and on, curious about what was going on in the square. This is the most popular square in Toronto with tourists, and there are events every week during the summer.

The performance was reflected through a huge screen located on the side of the square. This helped to see what was happening from any corner of the square. People watched what was happening, sitting on benches and chairs located in the park. Children jumped, played and repeated the dances of the acrobat.

She was given a very warm send-off at the end of her performance. And indeed, flying under the arches of Dundas Square on a real ice floe is super.

And how many emotions she had when she finished her performance and came down to square.


Here I want to note that this is a group of acrobats from Australia who specially flew to the LUMINATO festival. And this was the last day, Sunday, the last day of their performances.
This group did their first such performance in 2022 at the Sydney Festival and Sydney Opera House in January 2022.

Created by Joshua Thomson with an original score by Alaskan composer Mattew Burther.

2.7 tonne ice block transforms under summer sun as a monumental call to action about climate change.

Three times each day, the artists take to the ice to perform their show in front of an audience and make their contribution to the fight against climate change.

We are experiencing signs of global warming everywhere, Europe is experiencing heat waves, heavy rains with hail, here in Toronto this year we have unprecedented heat for our region. And all this speaks of global warming.
I had to work with the last of the performers.
She was the youngest member of this group.
A very young 16 year old girl.
I captured her as she climbed up on a crane, sitting timidly on a cold ice floe. Her performance was extraordinary.

The little girl hesitantly began to show her number. It seemed that she was a little constrained and afraid. But it only seemed that way to us.

Thaw means ice,snow,frozen substance become liquid or soft as a result of warming.

The girl seemed to be collecting droplets of water from the ice with her hands. She was collecting the immensity.

And then the extraordinary began. That is, the usual for my husband’s forecast, that it would rain. But rain can be different. And no one among the organizers foresaw the rain, since it interfered with the performance and was even dangerous. They did not foresee it.
And then, during the performance of this little girl, the youngest artist, from nowhere, the wind blew in. Clouds, the sky turned black and it did not rain, but real hail. In one minute, an avalanche of water poured out of the sky.
The square emptied, everyone ran for shelter, and they began to ask the poor girl to go down, since the weather did not allow the performance to continue. It was very dangerous.
But she refused. She refused to go down and finish the performance and in the rain on a very slippery ice floe she continued the performance. It’s so brave and so sensitive. We all watched her without taking our eyes off her. The girl seemed to come to life. She, all wet, on the cold ice floe, continued to show her performance and express her fight against global warming.

NO TIME TO WASTE is written on her poster.

We stood in the tents, holding our breath, looking at this brave girl.

The weather changed again and the final part of this artist’s performance was again light and a lot of people came running to the square to see how this tiny girl boldly flies under the arch of the park, lifted by a crane above the square, regardless of the weather, the evening, or us, the spectators.

This is the video, it is very memorable to me. It is how she is on a slippery ice floe, wet, after more than an hour of performance, at great speed, at the end of her performance, flying over our heads. This remains in my memory.

I think it’s not just me who remembers it. Everyone who was on that square that day, and all the organizers of the show.
The fight against global warming is our responsibility to the next generation. What will win – money or wisdom – is up to us to decide. Until now, wisdom has won.
That’s why we live on this planet today.

Huronia was waiting for us.

A trip always leads to new discoveries and wonderful impressions and long memories. And now a week has passed, the road dust has settled, my thoughts are already cold and I return to those days with memories.And everything was cool.Just a trip to Huronia. For you this is something, then I will reveal a secret. This is a peninsula adjacent to the large Lake Huron (by the way, the name of the lake comes from the same name as the peninsula). The lake is divided by the borders of America and Canada. On the other side is Michigan, and from here we, the residents of Ontario.

Previously, and this was 400-500 years ago, this neighborhood was intense. Then somehow the activity died down, then in the 1900s everything was actively revived again and looking at the photographs – there were huge ships with tourists, grain and wood were transported on ferries, cars and equipment were brought here. Ladies with lace parasols from the sun walked along the shore, cars with mustachioed men in tailcoats with canes drove. And a railway went to the main desks.
Interesting?
That’s great.
It all started with the fact that I looked in one word in Wikipedia. And word for word, and off we went. I could not sleep and when we went to the peninsula, I wanted to see everything with my own eyes.

We decided to visit two cities, namely Penetanguishene and Midland.

Penetanguishene is town in Simcoe Country first appears in records in 1882, but probably has an older history due to the terrain. The city’s buildings descend from the mountain to Lake Huron and has a beautiful harbor, where I already wrote above, at the end of the 18th-19th centuries life was booming. Most of the residents were from Quebec and French, so even now the main part of the city has French or French-named streets. Very little remains of the former city now, since its inhabitants are less than 10,000. Once this city received its name from the Wyandot Indians and means a place where the sand quickly grinds or land of the while rolling sands.

I didn’t see it there, as well as the lake itself, since in mid-January there are huge mountains of snow and the lake freezes. It turns into a road for snowmobiles. And the snowmobile traffic is active. Apparently, the snowfalls are heavy and people get tired of removing snow near their houses. The snow falls constantly and sometimes in waves, forming blizzards. The time I was there – gray clouds of snow, snow sometimes in flakes, sometimes in a solid wall. Then the locals leave their cars near their houses, dig out a small path from their house to the main road, where the snow is removed perfectly. And they go using snowmobiles. Reliable, fast and cheap. So these are the routes and lively skating I found on the lake and on the pier, a frozen boat crashed into the ice, which was waiting for spring and warmth to ride tourists around the lake.

The city was famous and popular precisely when in 1793 the governor of Upper Canada visited it and saw that the place was strategic and decided to build a military base here. It was built and in 1813-1814 a railway was built there. Life in this area was very active in those years. It was a stronghold against attack by the Americans and was connected to another important city in this region – Berry.

It is difficult to even imagine now that there were powerful defensive structures, as history says, along the entire coast and even on the Wasaga beaches, where there are now a huge number of beaches and hotels.

The same story also writes that these defensive structures along with the ships did not stand for long and sank several years later.

Gradually, from the middle of the 19th century, this place ceased to be military, at the beginning of the 20th century it turned into a commercial and industrial one. Well, now it is dying, since the main income comes from tourists who come for a short Canadian summer and settle in hotels, relax, enjoy local parks and fishing.
It is necessary to mention one more attraction – there are three islands near the city. Ferries go to these islands even today (though not now, everything is frozen). Indian families still live on the islands. I think that the movement of snowmobiles that I saw when I arrived at the harbor is the movement to the islands. I did not see a boat, and in such winter temperatures a ship cannot sail on ice. I read that there are ferries to the islands. One of the islands is the largest and it is closest to the city. We decided to go and see a tourist place called Discovery Harbour.

This place is located at the mouth of the harbor and has many restaurants and a famous local theater. But unfortunately they were closed. Apparently we chose the wrong time.
However, there is a certain charm in this, when you arrive at such a time. This is that there are no tourists, few people and in the hotel a hot tub awaits you, in which you sit and watch the snow fall. The feeling is indescribable. The ratio of temperatures, the magic of water and the play of water with temperature.
How can you forget this? And then just hot tea.

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