Going back to 1852, monitoring ice on Kempenfelt Bay was big news

One man used a pen and paper, the other a few clicks with a mouse on a spreadsheet.

But both men were fascinated by the freeze-up on Kempenfelt Bay and together have tracked the comings and goings of the ice sheet since 1852.

Alex Mills accepted the challenge of keeping Bob Sarjeant of Oro-Medonte Township’s ice logs up to date 19 years ago from his daughter, Mary Jane Sarjeant, after Bob’s death in 2002.

Where did Bob get the historical information?

I think what he (Bob) did was he checked out archives of things like the Barrie Examiner and other papers in the area and assembled them.

Why were these freeze and thaw dates tracked?

For events on ice, there was the Lake Simcoe Ice Industry, ice fishing and, you know, it was a frontier town, so it was always recorded in the papers, and he assembled that.

When does the ice usually freeze?

For this century, the average is Jan. 9 and that’s considerably later than it was in the latter part of the 20th century. There was kind of a rule of thumb in the 20th century that the ice would freeze between Christmas and New Year’s. That was fairly reliable. It’s an old rule that’s gone by the wayside.

Lake Couchiching in Orillia is almost frozen. What’s happening with Barrie?

In (Kempenfelt) Bay here in Barrie, we sort of had a false freeze about the 8th of January. It sort of froze then in a cold snap, but then it opened up again right away. We don’t count that as a freeze-up. (Note: Kempenfelt Bay froze over on Jan. 23.)

Has it ever not frozen?

There was a year recently when Lake Simcoe didn’t freeze, but I don’t know what that year was. But Kempenfelt Bay did and what we’re talking about is Kempenfelt Bay.

What are the latest dates for the bay freezing?

There are three dates later than today, so that shows we’re pretty near the records. Interestingly, two of them were pretty close in 1930 and 1931. The dates were Jan. 31 and Feb. 1, respectively. There was also one Feb. 2 and that was exactly 20 years ago in 2001.

Cheryl Browne, Local Journalism Initiative, Barrie Advance