A Lake Story

Experience Lake Ontario’s Colour Story Across Sky and Water with the Bentway

Project render by Melissa McGill

A Lake Story
By Melissa McGill

September 27 and 28, 2025 | Processions at 11am and 4pm
Along Toronto’s Eastern Waterfront
Free

On the occasion of the inaugural Water/Fall Festival, The Bentway is excited to extend its ambitious public art programming to celebrate the creativity and connectivity of Lake Ontario.

A Lake Story, a new commission by artist Melissa McGill, takes the form of a large-scale canoe procession that will write Lake Ontario’s story through colour, across the sky and water. Featuring 400+ local canoers and paddlers joining us for this memorable performance, participants will paddle in a coordinated, slow-moving procession. An epic celebration of Lake Ontario along the Toronto Waterfront, Melissa McGill’s project maps Toronto’s harbour and waterfront biosphere with the lake’s own vocabulary expressed through its natural colour palette. By giving visual voice to the interconnected relationships above and below the waters, the project invites us to shift our perspective to participate in and learn from nature’s wisdom and creativity.

Plan your experience.

Photo of artist Melissa McGill by Andrew Williamson

McGill has developed this site-specific natural colour story in collaboration with Jason Logan of the Toronto Ink Company. Together, McGill and Logan gathered and worked with natural and found material from the waters and shoreline to collaborate with the creative expression of the lake itself. Featuring materials such as goldenrod, clay, algae, red brick, and wild grape sourced from Leslie Street Spit, Gibraltar Point, and the re-naturalized Don River among others, these colours have been used to create vibrant wind-activated colour field paintings that will dance above the canoe procession to communicate Lake Ontario’s vibrant resilience both above and below its waters. Together water, colour, wind, and paddlers find and speak the lake’s language and tell its vital story. Guidance for this project has been provided by local Indigenous wisdom keepers and ecologists.

The canoe procession is planned to begin at Biidaasige Park, continuing along the East Bay Front to Sugar Beach, before turning back toward its starting point.

Recommended viewing areas:

• Biidaasige Park – In the Port Lands, down Cherry St at 51 Commissioners St
• Cherry Street South Bridge – In the Port Lands, down Cherry St past Commissioners St; find the white and yellow bridge
• Sugar Beach – Near the foot of Jarvis St, across from Redpath Sugar
• The water’s edge promenade at East Bay Front – Follow Merchant’s Wharf down from the foot of Parliament St

The procession route may be adjusted in response to wind and weather conditions. Follow @thebentway on Instagram to monitor for possible weather-related route changes on the day.

Following the performance, gather at Harbourfront Centre’s Concert Stage during Nuit Blanche for a celebration of A Lake Story. Enjoy a documentary chronicling the project’s creative journey, see the wind-activated colour field paintings up close, and honour the community partners, paddlers, and artists who brought this story to life.

A Lake Story celebrates the ongoing environmental commitment of Toronto’s Waterfront and the re–naturalization of the Don River, and is only possible thanks to the collaboration of many partners involved, including Waterfront Toronto, Waterfront BIA, Ports Toronto, Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, Nieuport, Redpath Sugar, Toronto Foundation, Nova Craft Canoe, and community support from the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, amongst other generous friends.

Photo by Andrew Williamson

And don’t miss:

SOLAR
October 16 – 19, 2025
The Bentway at Strachan Gate
Get tickets

As the sun sets on the Sun/Shade exhibition, The Bentway presents SOLAR, a new large-scale light installation by Italian artist Quayola and commissioned in partnership with Videocittà, Rome’s celebrated festival of video and digital culture. Guided by a robotic arm and synchronized beams, SOLAR performs a spectacle of sunset by merging the sun’s rhythms with digital choreography to create an immersive experience of light and motion.

About The Bentway

The Bentway works to ignite the urban imagination, using the city as site, subject, and canvas.

Anchored under Toronto’s Gardiner Expressway and guiding its complex future, The Bentway is a growing public space, and much more. The Bentway is a new type of civic organization: a not-for-profit, powered by vital partnerships with the City of Toronto, residents, supporters, artists, city-builders, and dreamers. The Bentway is a catalyst rooted in experimentation, leading a creative movement to re-imagine the opportunities of urban spaces.

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Accessibility:
The Bentway is fully accessible. For more information, visit here.