The Long Thaw

A century of harvesting ice from Lac Brumeux is a heavy legacy, and this warm winter threatens to sink it all.

From the second-story window of the house his great-great-grandfather had built with his own hands, Ryan Leclerc documented the death of a season. The camera, a heavy, pre-owned DSLR that had cost him two summers of stacking wood and mucking out the icehouse, felt like an extension of his eye, a mechanical filter for a reality he found increasingly difficult to process raw. Through the 70-200mm lens, Lac Brumeux was a flattened expanse of bruised pewter, less a solid thing and more a memory of one. The snow that should have been a thick, forgiving blanket was a threadbare dusting, revealing dark, weeping patches of waterlogged ice. The pines on the far shore stood stark and black, their branches not laden with white but merely slicked with a dampness that refused to freeze. It was February, a month that, in the Leclerc family annals, was synonymous with the deep, bone-cracking cold that made the lake ice a solid, dependable quarry. This February, however, felt like a sullen, reluctant November.

His viewfinder framed the scene with a cold, journalistic detachment. *Entry 114: The Lake. February 12th. Temperature: 2 degrees Celsius.* He pressed the shutter, the click an unnaturally loud sound in the quiet room. The image that appeared on the small screen was technically perfect and emotionally devastating. It captured the light, which was all wrong—a weak, diffused glow that held no promise of the diamond-hard glitter of a true winter sun. It captured the texture of the ice, pockmarked and grey, like old, tired concrete. It captured the absence of everything that was supposed to be there: the deep, resonant silence of a world frozen solid, the sharp, clean scent of sub-zero air, the very feeling of permanence that had defined this place, and his family, for five generations.

The house groaned around him, a symphony of settling timbers and sighing floorboards that had been his life’s soundtrack. It was a sound his grandfather, Bastien, called ‘the house breathing.’ To Ryan, it sounded more like a death rattle. For a hundred and twenty years, the Leclercs had harvested ice from Lac Brumeux. They’d cut massive, crystalline blocks with long-toothed saws, floated them through man-made channels, and hauled them up a ramp into the cavernous, sawdust-insulated icehouse. In the spring and summer, they sold it to the lodges and fishing camps that dotted the larger lakes to the south, a cold, clear currency pulled from the heart of winter. It was a legacy as solid as the two-foot-thick ice they used to harvest. But the ice was no longer two feet thick. Some years it barely reached twelve inches. This year, Bastien’s auger had measured eight inches near the shore, and he’d stopped measuring after that, his jaw set in a line as rigid as the horizon.

Ryan lowered the camera, the weight of it suddenly immense. He was seventeen. For seventeen years, this house, this lake, this legacy had been his entire world. A world that was now, quite literally, melting away. His project, the one he’d told his guidance counselor was for his university applications, was called *The Thaw*. It was a photo-documentary of the last ice harvesters on Lac Brumeux. He’d framed it as a respectful homage, a preservation of a dying tradition. It was a lie, of course. Or at least, not the whole truth. The project was his ticket out. It was his evidence, his meticulously compiled proof that this life was no longer viable, that holding on was not a sign of strength, but a form of madness. Each photograph of a rusted tool or a crack in the ice was another nail in the coffin of his future here, and he hammered each one with a grim sense of purpose.

Downstairs, a pan clattered in the kitchen, followed by his mother Élise’s soft curse. Dinner. The daily ritual that had become a battlefield of loaded silences and conversational landmines. He turned from the window and cataloged his room. It was a space of carefully managed contradictions. On one wall hung a framed, black-and-white photograph of his great-grandfather, a severe-looking man with Bastien’s eyes, standing proudly beside a mountain of ice blocks. Beside it, a poster of a band from Montreal, their city-slick energy a blatant affront to the room’s rustic history. His desk was a chaotic pile of photography books, college pamphlets from Toronto and Vancouver, and charging cables. Everything in the room screamed of a desire for elsewhere.

He picked up a smaller, older camera from his desk, a vintage film rangefinder. This one was for the details. He walked over to the corner of his room where a collection of old tools leaned against the wall, relics his grandfather had finally, begrudgingly, allowed him to ‘borrow for the school thing.’ They were more than tools; they were artifacts, each one telling a story of strain and sweat. He knelt, bringing the viewfinder to his eye. The focus patch aligned on the handle of the grapple hook, a long pole with a wicked-looking iron claw at its end. The wood was worn impossibly smooth, darkened with a century’s worth of palm sweat and pine tar. He could feel the ghosts of the hands that had held it—his great-grandfather’s, his grandfather’s, his own father’s before he’d left for the oil fields of Alberta when Ryan was six, a departure that was rarely mentioned but always felt.

He clicked the shutter. The film advanced with a satisfying, mechanical whir. Next, the ice saw. It was a monster, seven feet long with teeth like a shark’s, a two-man implement of pure, brute force. Ryan focused on the junction where the steel blade met the wooden handle. There were initials carved there: *P.L.* Philippe Leclerc. The man who started it all. He imagined Philippe standing on the virgin ice of this lake, seeing not a frozen body of water, but a future. A foundation. A legacy. What would Philippe think now, seeing his great-great-grandson cataloging his tools for a museum exhibit of a life that was already over?

“Ryan! The tourtière isn’t getting any younger, and neither is your grandfather!” Élise’s voice, laced with its usual weary humor, drifted up the stairs.

“Coming!” he called back, the word feeling hollow in his throat. He placed the camera back on his desk with surgical care and headed downstairs, bracing himself for the singular chill of a Leclerc family dinner, a cold far more penetrating than anything the failing winter could muster.

The kitchen was the warmest room in the house, both in temperature and in spirit, though that wasn't saying much. A massive wood-burning stove, the house’s cast-iron heart, radiated a dry heat that smelled of birch and maple. Élise stood before it, her back to the room. She was a woman who seemed perpetually in motion, even when standing still. Her hands were never idle; they were always wiping a counter, stirring a pot, or kneading dough, as if her constant industry could hold the fraying edges of their lives together. Tonight, she was slicing into a deep-dish tourtière, the steam rising from the spiced meat pie carrying the scent of Christmases past, of colder, better winters.

Bastien was already at the table, his bulk filling the sturdy oak chair at its head. He wasn't looking at anything in particular, just staring at the wall, his hands resting on the table, palms down. They were massive, gnarled things, the knuckles swollen, the skin a roadmap of scars and calluses. Hands that had spent sixty years at war with winter. He was a living monument to the family legacy, his silence as heavy and immoveable as the granite bedrock beneath the house. Ryan knew that silence. It was a calculating quiet, a gathering of arguments and grievances that would be deployed with devastating precision.

Ryan slid into his seat opposite his grandfather. The wooden chair scraped against the floor, the sound grating in the tense quiet. Élise placed a hefty slice of tourtière in front of him, followed by a dollop of homemade ketchup that was more spicy than sweet. She did the same for Bastien, then sat down between them, a deliberate buffer zone.

“Looks good, Mom,” Ryan said, his voice a little too loud.

“It’s tourtière,” Bastien grunted, without looking at him. “It always looks good. The question is whether the appetite is worthy of it.”

It had begun. The opening salvo. Ryan picked up his fork, the metal cool against his fingers.

“Well, my appetite spent all afternoon cataloging the antique tool collection, so I’d say it’s earned its keep,” Ryan retorted, the word ‘antique’ chosen with deliberate care.

Bastien’s eyes, a pale, washed-out blue that mirrored the winter sky, finally moved to meet his. “They’re not antiques. They’re tools. They work. Which is more than I can say for that gas-powered piece of junk you convinced me to buy.” He gestured with his fork toward the window, in the direction of the shed where the new motorized ice auger sat, currently in a state of disassembly.

“It would work if you used the right fuel-to-oil ratio, like I told you,” Ryan said, stabbing a piece of pastry. “It’s not a lawnmower, Pépère.”

“A machine that sensitive has no place on the ice,” Bastien declared, his voice a low rumble. “Our saws never needed a special diet. Just a strong back and a sharp file.”

“Our saws also required two men and took an hour to do what the auger could do in five minutes,” Ryan shot back. “It’s called efficiency.”

“It’s called corner-cutting,” Bastien corrected. “There are no corners to cut on the lake. You do it right, or the lake takes you. Simple as that.”

Élise sighed, a small, barely audible puff of air. She’d heard this argument, or a version of it, a thousand times. “Could we please have one meal where we don’t discuss the theological implications of two-stroke engine maintenance? Let’s talk about something else. Anything else.”

Ryan glanced at his mother. Her smile was brittle. He knew this was for her benefit, this attempt at civility. But the tension in the room was a physical thing, a presence at the table as real as the three of them. It was the ghost of his father, the ghost of his future, the ghost of winters past.

“Fine,” Ryan said, turning his attention back to his grandfather. “How’s the ice? Did you check it again today?”

Bastien chewed his food slowly, deliberately, making Ryan wait. It was another one of his tactics: conversational warfare fought with pacing. Finally, he swallowed.

“It’s holding,” he said. “Seven inches out by the pressure ridge. We can start tomorrow.”

Ryan’s fork stopped halfway to his mouth. Élise put hers down with a soft clink. “Bastien, no. Seven inches is nothing. The co-op guidelines say ten, minimum. You wrote those guidelines!”

“The co-op is a bunch of old women playing canasta and worrying about insurance premiums,” Bastien scoffed. “I know this lake better than I know my own wife’s face. God rest her soul. Seven inches of black ice is stronger than a foot of this slushy white stuff we’ve been getting. It’s time. The lodges are calling. They need their orders filled.”

“The lodges can use freezers like everyone else in the twenty-first century,” Ryan muttered, just loud enough to be heard.

The explosion was immediate and absolute. Bastien’s hand came down on the table, a crack that made the plates jump. “Do not speak of things you do not understand, boy! This is not about ice. This is about our name. The Leclerc name means something in this valley. It means quality. It means we do not quit. We do not run away when things get hard.”

The final words were aimed directly at Ryan, a poison-tipped dart. *Run away.* It was the same phrase he’d used when Ryan had first brought home the pamphlets for the University of British Columbia. *You want to run away to the coast? There’s nothing for you there.*

“I’m not running away,” Ryan said, his voice dangerously low. “I’m looking forward. You’re the one who’s stuck in the past. You’d rather sink to the bottom of that lake than admit this is over.”

“Over?” Bastien’s laugh was a harsh, barking sound. “I’ve seen winters like this before. The warm spell of ‘78. The big thaw in ‘92. The lake always comes back. The cold always returns. But a man’s character? Once that thaws, it turns to mud for good.”

“That’s the difference between you and me, Pépère,” Ryan said, pushing his chair back. His appetite was gone, replaced by a cold, hard knot in his stomach. “You see character in freezing for a lost cause. I see it in knowing when it’s time to build a boat.”

He stood up, leaving his half-eaten dinner on the table. He could feel his mother’s eyes on him, pleading. He could feel his grandfather’s, burning with a cold fire. He didn’t look at either of them. He walked out of the kitchen, the warmth of the stove feeling oppressive, and took refuge in the cold silence of the rest of the house.

The next morning, the world was wrapped in a thick, wet fog that clung to everything, muffling sound and stealing colour. It was the kind of weather that made the lake feel infinite and treacherous. Ryan stood on the shore, the camera heavy around his neck, and watched his grandfather prepare for the harvest. There was no argument, no discussion. The decision had been made in the silence that followed last night’s battle. Bastien was going on the ice, and Ryan, as the only other able-bodied man in the house, was expected to follow.

Bastien moved with a methodical, almost ceremonial grace. He was checking the equipment, his movements economical and precise. He ran a gloved hand along the blade of the big pit saw, checking for any nicks. He tested the points on the ice tongs. He inspected the new chain on the motorized saw—the one Élise had bought him last month, a concession to his age and her anxiety. Bastien had accepted it with a grunt, treating the bright orange machine with a suspicion usually reserved for tax collectors and politicians from the city.

“You going to take pictures all day, or are you going to make yourself useful?” Bastien’s voice cut through the fog, devoid of its earlier anger, replaced by a flat, professional tone. This was the boss, the ice master. On the lake, family dynamics were supposed to dissolve, replaced by a hierarchy of experience.

Ryan lowered the camera. “What do you want me to do?”

“Take the auger. Drill test holes every twenty feet. We’ll mark out a grid. I want to know exactly what we’re standing on.”

Ryan nodded, grabbing the small, handheld auger—a simple corkscrew of steel with a wooden handle. This, at least, was a task he didn’t mind. It felt scientific, responsible. He stepped onto the ice, his boots crunching on the thin layer of frozen slush. The surface was slick, unnervingly dark. He could see his own faint reflection, a ghostly figure suspended over the black, unseen depths.

He started drilling. The auger bit into the ice, shaving off wet, grey curls. It was harder work than it looked. He had to put his weight into it, his shoulders straining. Seven inches. Bastien was right. The ice plug he pulled out was clear and solid—black ice, the strongest kind. But seven inches was still seven inches. It was like walking on single-pane glass. He moved out further, the familiar shape of the house receding into the grey mist, leaving him and his grandfather alone in a world of white and grey.

He drilled another hole. And another. The numbers were consistent. Seven inches. Seven and a half. Back to seven. It was a fragile, uniform sheet stretched over 400 feet of lethally cold water. A shiver traced its way up his spine that had nothing to do with the temperature.

Bastien, satisfied with the preparations, started the motorized saw. The engine sputtered to life with a roar that tore the morning’s silence to shreds. The sound was an obscenity in this quiet place. It echoed off the unseen hills, a mechanical scream of impatience. Ryan watched as his grandfather, with the practiced ease of long experience, began to score the first line. The saw’s carbide-tipped chain chewed into the ice, throwing up a spray of glittering slush. It moved fast, far faster than the old ways.

Ryan tried to frame a photo, but the vibration of the engine seemed to travel through the ice, up through the soles of his boots, making it impossible to hold the camera steady. He felt a deep, instinctive wrongness about the machine. It was too loud, too violent. The old saws, for all their labor, had worked with the ice, their rhythmic rasp a conversation with the cold. This thing was an assault.

They worked for two hours, carving out a large rectangle, the first of many they would need to fill the icehouse. The air filled with the smell of two-stroke exhaust, a smell that would cling to their clothes for days. Bastien worked relentlessly, his face set in a mask of concentration. He was in his element, a man reclaiming his kingdom. Ryan’s job was to follow behind with a spud bar, a long steel chisel, to clear the cut of ice chips, ensuring the block would break free cleanly.

It was on the third long cut that the machine sputtered. The high-pitched whine of the engine faltered, dropping in pitch to a guttural cough. Then, with a final, pathetic wheeze, it died. Silence rushed back in, vast and profound.

“What the hell?” Bastien yanked the starter cord. Nothing. He yanked it again, his face turning red with effort. The engine remained stubbornly silent.

“Let me see,” Ryan said, walking over carefully. He knelt beside the machine. “Probably flooded it.”

“I know how to start a motor, Ryan.”

“You’re pulling it like you’re trying to rip it in half. You’ve got to be gentle.” Ryan took the handle. He pulled it out slowly, then gave it a short, sharp tug. Nothing. He tried again. Silence. He opened the fuel cap. The smell of gasoline was sharp. He checked the spark plug. It was wet.

“It’s flooded. We need to let it sit.”

Bastien stared at the useless piece of orange plastic as if it had personally betrayed him. He kicked it, a sharp, angry motion. “See? This is what I’m talking about. Fragile junk. City junk.”

He turned and strode toward the shore without another word. Ryan watched him go, a small, dark figure against the endless grey. He felt a strange mix of frustration and grim satisfaction. He’d been right. The new way had failed. But now what?

Bastien returned a few minutes later, dragging something long and dark behind him. It was the old saw. The seven-foot monster. The one with his great-great-grandfather’s initials. He threw it down on the ice, the steel ringing against the frozen surface.

“Now,” he said, his voice a low growl. “We work.”

There was a terrible, beautiful purity to the old way. It was a rhythm of two bodies working in concert, a physical conversation. One man on each end of the long wooden handle, pulling and pushing, the saw’s teeth biting, biting, biting their way through the ice. It was grueling, back-breaking labor. Ryan’s shoulders screamed in protest after only a few minutes. His lungs burned. Sweat beaded on his forehead and froze in his eyebrows. But there was a kind of honesty to it that the motorized saw lacked. Every inch was earned.

They fell into a silent cadence. Pull, push, pull, push. The only sound was their own ragged breathing and the *shhhh-shhhh-shhhh* of the steel blade moving through its frozen medium. The fog began to thin, and a weak, watery sun broke through, turning the ice into a sheet of hammered silver. Ryan found his focus narrowing until the entire world was just the saw, the deepening black line of the cut, and the movements of the man opposite him.

He watched his grandfather. Bastien was seventy-two years old, but on the ice, he moved like a man of forty. His body, thick and powerful, was a machine built for this single purpose. There was no wasted motion, no sign of fatigue. The saw seemed less a tool in his hands and more a part of his body, an extension of his will. For the first time all day, Ryan felt a flicker of something other than resentment. It was a grudging respect, a glimpse into the formidable strength that had built this life, this legacy. The same strength that was now refusing to let it go.

They finished the cut, the saw breaking through the final inch with a deep groan. A long, perfect block of ice, twenty feet long and two feet wide, was now defined, ready to be split and floated. Bastien stood up straight, his chest heaving slightly. A rare, thin smile touched his lips.

“See?” he said, his voice raspy. “That’s how it’s done. No gasoline. No spark plugs. Just a Leclerc on each end of the saw.”

“Yeah, well, this Leclerc’s arms are about to fall off,” Ryan said, trying to make it a joke, but the words came out breathless and raw. He flexed his hands, trying to work the feeling back into his numb fingers.

“You’ll get used to it,” Bastien said. “It’s in your blood.”

Ryan didn't answer. He looked down at the cut, at the dark, impossibly black water churning just inches below the surface. *It’s in your blood.* The phrase hung in the air, feeling more like a curse than a promise.

They worked through the afternoon, a slow, arduous process of cutting and splitting. They used the tongs to guide the massive, 200-pound blocks toward the channel they had cleared, a slow-moving parade of captured winter. The sun, having made its brief appearance, vanished again behind a thickening layer of cloud. The temperature, which had hovered just above freezing, began to drop. A wind picked up from the north, sharp and biting, bringing with it the familiar scent of deep winter. Ryan felt a sliver of hope. Maybe his grandfather was right. Maybe the cold was returning.

As dusk began to settle, painting the sky in shades of violet and grey, Élise appeared on the shore. She carried a large thermos and a bundle of blankets. Her presence was a silent rebuke of their recklessness, but also an admission of her inability to stop them.

“That’s enough for today,” she called out, her voice thin in the wind. “Come in before you freeze solid.”

Bastien looked at the sky, then at the modest stack of ice blocks they’d managed to haul into the icehouse. It was barely a fraction of what they needed. “We’re not done.”

“Yes, you are,” Élise said, her tone leaving no room for argument. “The temperature is dropping. That wind will refreeze the channel solid by morning. You’re done. Both of you.”

For once, Bastien didn’t argue. He drove the saw into a snowbank on the shore and began to unlace his heavy boots. The day’s labor had finally caught up to him. He moved stiffly, each motion an effort. Ryan gathered the rest of the tools, his own muscles aching with a profound, deep-seated weariness he had never felt before. He felt older than seventeen.

That night, dinner was a quiet affair. The earlier tension had been burned away by sheer physical exhaustion. They ate in near silence, the only sounds the clinking of cutlery and the howling of the wind outside. Ryan watched his grandfather. Bastien’s hands trembled slightly as he lifted his fork. His face, illuminated by the warm kitchen light, looked ancient, carved from the same granite as the Canadian Shield. The iron strength Ryan had witnessed on the ice was gone, replaced by a fragile, human weariness. He looked old. He looked tired.

After dinner, Ryan went up to his room and collapsed onto his bed, not even bothering to change his clothes. He should have been processing his photos, writing his notes, working on his escape plan. But he couldn't summon the energy. He could only feel the phantom rhythm of the saw in his arms, the pull and push, pull and push. He closed his eyes and saw the dark line of the cut, the black water beneath. He fell into a heavy, dreamless sleep.

He was woken by a sound. A scraping, metallic noise from outside. He sat bolt upright, his heart pounding. The house was dark, the digital clock on his nightstand glowing 3:17 AM. The wind had died down, and a deep, profound silence had fallen. And yet, he’d heard something.

He got out of bed and went to the window, the floorboards cold beneath his bare feet. He looked out at the lake. The fog was gone, and a full, brilliant moon hung in the star-dusted sky. The world was bathed in a stark, blue-white light. The ice gleamed. And out on the ice, a lone figure was moving.

It was Bastien. He was dressed in his full winter gear, a dark silhouette against the luminous surface. He was dragging the big saw. Ryan’s blood ran cold. What was he doing? He couldn't be going back out there to work. Not now. Not in the middle of the night. It was madness.

Ryan threw on his clothes, his fingers fumbling with his boots. He had to stop him. He ran down the stairs, trying to be quiet, but every step seemed to echo through the sleeping house. He burst out the front door into the shocking cold. The air was razor-sharp now, the kind of deep freeze they should have had all winter. It had finally arrived. But the ice... a single cold night wouldn't be enough to thicken it, not after the thaw. It was still the same seven treacherous inches.

“Pépère!” Ryan yelled, his voice sounding small and thin in the vast, silent landscape. “Pépère, what are you doing? Come back!”

The figure on the ice didn’t stop. He had reached the grid they had cut earlier and was positioning the saw. He was going to start cutting. Alone. In the dark.

Ryan started to run, his boots slipping on the frosted path down to the shore. He had to get to him. He had to make him listen. This wasn’t strength anymore. This was a suicide mission, a final, desperate act of defiance against a world that no longer had a place for him. He reached the edge of the lake, his breath coming in white, panicked clouds. He took one step onto the ice, then another.

“PÉPÈRE!” he screamed, his voice raw with fear. “STOP! IT’S NOT SAFE!”

His grandfather finally stopped. He turned slowly, a shadow in the moonlight. Ryan couldn’t see his face, but he could feel the immense, unshakeable weight of his stubbornness, even from a hundred yards away. They stood there for a long moment, two generations frozen in a silent standoff on a field of glass.

From across the unnerving silence of the lake, a sound like the world splitting apart answered him—a sharp, percussive crack that vibrated through the frozen ground and up into the bones of his feet.