Photos by Steve Wilson

1. Can an object have properties before we experience it? The ice on the Red River will support your body weight, if you haven’t had any breakfast that morning and if you don’t move a muscle once you’ve stepped on it. Stay absolutely still as the cracks spread. Don’t wink an eyelid. Hope the plunging cold of another Prairie nightfall will increase its thickness enough so you can ease off it, ever so gently…

2. Does the world have a cause? Lake ice presents us with a paradox:  it reflects everything in its nothingness like a 1000-carat cubist lollipop, but can it reflect its own nothingness, too? Hmmm… This chunk of gemology came from a pristine bay in Lake Winnipeg, a perfect gift for a hard-to-please Ice Queen who wants her world on a stick.

3. The mind only thinks in terms of causality. Crud ice is what they get at Portage and Main in downtown Winnipeg. The cement-like residue of frozen brown gunk sits on the curbs long after the robins return. It freezes and thaws and cracks the pavement and makes potholes and saves every tossed cigarette of winter like a rare pearl. We thought we avoided it, driving slowly, gingerly, through the city, but we still got a flat tire before lunch. Steve is shown paying it back.

4. Morality requires truly autonomous acts. Under green ice is where you find the desirable game fish of Canada – the walleye, called greenbacks on Lake Winnipeg. Stu McKay, the mysteriously black-masked outfitter of Cats on the Red, calls them “the epitome of a good eater.” He drops a sonar device into his hole just to watch fish hover by his bait.  Watching them doesn’t make them bite more, he admits, but at least it gives him something to do. We took turns posing with our solo catch of the trip, then tossed it back for its next photo-session. When my turn came I promptly stepped into an unmarked ice-hole and experienced the thrill of blue jean ice for the day.

5. The only possible argument in support of the existence of God: Is a blonde, with the ice-blue eyes.  Michelle Gunnarfson, 21, works as café hostess at the environmentally perfect Hecla Oasis Inn. She’s a descendant of Viking Icelanders who settled Hecla Island in the 1870’s and survived smallpox epidemics, floods, blizzards – the usual pioneer opera. Michelle moved back to Hecla in 2007 and now wins staring contests with wolves and male tourists. The guy on the left? Who cares?

6. Is it in our interest to accept a hypothetical? Shower ice can be found in Central Canada wherever there’s a stiff breeze. Here, Oz tourist Sue Hess shows top form as another cascade smacks her right in the face. She was enjoying the scenery during a Via Rail train trip from Winnipeg through the taiga to Churchill, in a long and futile search for the Northern Lights. “Outback with blizzards” was her only comment.

7. Know what ought to be done. Meat Ice is what they feed sled dogs in Churchill, after they give it forty whacks with a sharp ax. Don’t ever tease Chimo by grabbing his pink brick. Chains have been known to snap like twigs. What are you going to do when he comes at you dancing on two legs like Kid Chocolate with a steel muzzle?

8. Space and time are not concepts. Space and time are what surrounds this land of ours, one centimetre from Churchill. The man riding into the blue yonder is musher Charlie Lundy, 57, at the start of a 40-mile training run with his 10 sled dogs, for the Hudson Bay Quest race. The glow in the sky is qubuq, an Inuit word (western Arctic) for the reflected light on the horizon of sea-ice. Another word for it is polar bear country.

9. Resist dogmatic slumber! Tired of ice is what you get on your windshield when you return, limping in frozen jeans and smelling of raw fish, to your crystallized car with the flat tire. Tomorrow you can go snow-shoeing on apu ice, Inuit for the sharp crust covering the northern Prairie. Apu will support you if you use snowshoes properly, and won’t if you don’t. In the meantime you can use your cubist ice to chill whatever drink they decide to bring you, and brood about what you could have said to Miss Blue Eyes.