Canada’s Ice Huts

TEXT Mark Bessoudo

PHOTOS Richard Johnson

Growing up along the shores of the Kennebecasis River in Renforth, New Brunswick, I watched as ice fishing huts appeared each winter on the frozen surface. They arrived with the season, clustered closely together—part settlement, part mirage—and vanished just as predictably. I never fished from them. My relationship to these structures was almost entirely visual, formed through repeated observation until their presence became habitual.

That familiarity is instructive.