The lake at the Toronto International Boat Show (running until Jan. 22) holds a million gallons of water, pumped into Exhibition Place’s Ricoh Coliseum from Lake Ontario. The lake may be fake but, as in real life, to get there one must pass through cottage country—an exhibition hall at the Direct Energy Centre that hosts 550 vendors over the show’s nine days. Up to 80,000 boat enthusiasts pass through here every winter, dreaming of summer, and last weekend, as most Torontonians shivered under a cold-weather alert, show-goers queued at the ice-cream stand and enjoyed a backyard barbecue, complete with a guitarist wailing Otis Redding’s “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay.”
Alan Heisey, the 83-year-old publisher of Georgian Bay Today (a quarterly tabloid that covers “cottaging, boating, rattlesnakes and all the good stuff”), stuck by his table throughout the afternoon. The show hasn’t changed much in the 24 years he’s attended. “It’s a wonderful event in the marine world,” he said. “For boaters frozen out of their activity, the show is therapy. And I am big on therapy.”
Back at the fake lake, emcee Geoff Hulet paced the edges of the water, amping up the crowd for a wakeboarding lesson, shouting, “I love the Boat Show. I love boats. This is awesome!” Newbies were mounted onto boards and pulled by cable and pulley across the water as Hulet offered instruction (bend your knees, don’t stand up too quickly). But the water itself was a frigid reminder of the season: Pumped unheated from Lake Ontario, it was only 7°C. Most would-be boarders withstood only a few rounds before frantically doggy-paddling back to the dock.
