MANITOULIN—Most of us don’t realize it, but Manitoulin is home to some of the best surfing waters the Great Lakes has to offer—even in January.
For the past seven years, Helene Alegre Filion of Sudbury has been plying Manitoulin’s south shore waters on her board in all months of the year, including just last week.
“It was great!” Ms. Alegre Filion enthused of her Island surf when contacted by The Expositor Monday.
Ms. Alegre Filion said Manitoulin Island’s south shore is blessed with many amazing places to catch a wave, but last Wednesday she settled on Dominion Bay due to wind speed and direction—surfing really is a fine science.
The surfer explained that she had her first taste of surfing in Tofino in British Columbia. Like so many before her, once she tried the sport she was hooked and couldn’t wait to do it again. The problem is, she said, funds to jet to some of surfing’s more known locales is costly and she simply couldn’t afford it.
She recalled the many summers of her youth spent on Manitoulin, largely aboard her father’s salmon fishing boat, and the days they couldn’t head out on the bounding main due to high winds and waves. Manitoulin, she thought, could be the perfect spot to catch some waves.
Ms. Alegre Filion described the complex anatomy of what makes a good wave, starting with the bathymetry of the Island’s shores—ideally a surfer wants a place where the lake bottom suddenly goes from shallow to deep. This creates pressure which in turn creates a good wave. Couple that with the right wind speed and direction and you could have yourself some nice seven foot waves to ride.
She explained that she got to work, studying the lake’s geography and finding areas she thought would make for ideal surf spots, heading to Manitoulin two to three times a week to test her theories. Eventually, she got it right and never looked back.
Ms. Alegre Filion said that any place in the Providence Bay area is typically good for surfing, keeping in mind that almost all of Manitoulin’s land is private and landowner permission may be needed before heading out for a surf. In the wintertime, the surfer goes armed with a surfer-specific wetsuit with a hood, neoprene boots and gloves, Vaseline for her face, a rope and a ladder.
Typically, she said, an ice shelf will have built up along the shore. Tying a rope to a nearby tree or other stationary item, she will head out across the ice shelf and jump into the lake, which usually registers a chilly 0°C to 4°C. The ladder is needed to get back on top of the shelf once the surf is over.
“You’re surfing in slush sometimes, and sometimes there’s big chunks of ice to avoid that have broken away from the shelf,” she added.
Ms. Alegre Filion noted that Manitoulin Island is one of the few places in the Great Lakes where the surfing is good all of the time, even in the summer months when heat often means smaller waves or no waves at all. Waves increase in size in the fall and winter, when the winds increase too.
Next to Manitoulin, “my heart belongs to Barbados,” Ms. Alegre Filion said of her favourite surfing haunt. “It reminds me of a more tropical Manitoulin,” she added, noting the unexplored shoreline, friendly people, beautiful landscape, “and the food is fantastic, and there’s fresh fish—just like on Manitoulin!”
“It floors me that you can do this sport right here on Manitoulin,” she added.
Once she began to post her findings online, others began to take notice, including Little Current’s own Cooper brothers, Chris and Ryan, and Geoff Lovelace, who reached out to Ms. Alegre Filion on how to get started.
“If you have the opportunity to do this—try it,” she urged. “If I had known about surfing on the Island when I was growing up there, it would have changed my whole life,” she attested.
While surfing is not something most people can just pick up on the first time, it is good for all ages, Ms. Alegre Filion said. It is highly addictive, she warned, and could cause you to miss major moments in your life. “I missed both my university graduations because it was a good surf day,” she admitted.
The lack of public land on, specifically, the south shore of Manitoulin does make it more difficult to surf (she recalled fondly the days of surfing at Carter Bay), but she still urges people to try—in the summer months to start.
Ms. Alegre Filion said she wishes Manitoulin would embrace the surfing culture as there could be much benefit to its people, noting the many people from all over who message her about surfing Manitoulin.
Seven years on, the Great Lakes surfing community is growing with a whole fellowship out there for Ms. Alegre Filion to share her knowledge and resources with.
It is her hope that the bug that has so fully hooked her will be instilled in other Island youths and with it the values of respect and kindness to others and the guardianship of our waters and beaches that are so integral to her way of life today.
To follow Ms. Alegre Filion’s adventures check her out on Facebook or on Instagram @ha_filion.
