Please don’t walk on the Toronto Harbour ice
“Common sense and repeated warnings are being ignored,” according to police
Life is all about choices, and hasn’t everybody made some odd ones? Just look at all those university students who signed up for basket-weaving courses, or the city employee who seems to have stolen $18,800 worth of electronics from the mailroom, or the Olympics organizers who only brought 10,000 condoms to the function.
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Over on the Instagram page of the Toronto Police Service’s Marine Unit, however, we are seeing some astonishingly poor decision-making. Images show people, including small children, walking on the ice inside Toronto Harbour, even getting close to open water amid fluctuating temperatures.
“In January, Toronto Police Service Marine Unit and media partners repeatedly warned the public not to venture onto ice inside Toronto Harbour, as ice is constantly broken up for ferry and marine traffic and remains unpredictable,” says the post, alerting Torontonians to how dangerous this is. “Despite clear warnings, officers are now responding daily to incidents involving large groups, families, and children walking onto unsafe harbour ice.”
It goes on to mention that some people have fallen through, and video footage shows an individual falling in and struggling to get out.
We’ve all enjoyed watching the various Olympic ice disciplines, but this is taking it too far.
Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
