The Lake Surfers

Local photographer’s book captures the County’s surf community

Calder Sidley is stoked. The usually reserved 28-year-old photojournalist and writer is celebrating the release of The Lake Surfers, a photography book chronicling over four years exploring the County’s coastline and capturing the local surf community (including this writer, moustache curls iced and eyelashes frozen shut on page nine).

“I thought I would sell 10 copies to the guys that surf here and that would be it,” says Sidley, who also shoots commercial photography for local businesses. “The fact that people are actually interested and I’m sending them internationally is shocking… I didn’t expect it at all.”

The initial run of The Lake Surfers is nearly sold out (it’s currently available at Everything Variety and Oak Clothing Co.) and Sidley has sent copies to customers as far as Australia and the southern United States.

The images in Sidley’s The Lake Surfers offer a glimpse into the secret parallel existence of surfing in the County and its neighbouring coastlines—photographs of big skies and angry water, oceanic waves, and the sadistic toll of the elements on the human body. It’s an homage to a culture that has quietly existed here for more than 40 years.

Capturing the images has required commitment in the form of enduring 4:30 a.m. mornings, subzero temperatures, constantly shifting light, relentless 50km/h winds, and more recently, piles of rotten alewife fish. At times, it was enough to make him doubt the project.

“There was one miserable session… three hours of driving… big, fat rain, raining sideways, and I had my rain gear on but it was drenched— the cameras were drenched, I couldn’t see anybody in the photos, they were all blurry… it looked like mud,” says Sidley. “That was the one where I was just like, I’m over this.”

But he wasn’t. Within a week or two, he was back out shooting again, locked in the orbit of lake surfing and its kooky cast of characters — a community Sidley feels a strong kinship with. Now, book in hand, it all feels worth it.

Sidley spent his childhood in Elmvale, a small town outside of Wasaga Beach. “My family wasn’t from there,” he says. “Growing up in that small bubble and being on the outside made me want to escape and go see everything.”

At 17, he fled west, working a snowboard season at Castle Mountain in Alberta, a hidden gem for the hill community. By 24, he’d visited over 25 countries, working odd jobs including ski season stints in Japan and Australia. He discovered surfing in Sri Lanka and immersed himself in the lifestyle in Australia, living in a van at a surf break, and continuing that lifestyle in Tofino, British Columbia.

Throughout it all, he tirelessly documented his travels.

“I have always had a camera in my hand,” says Sidley. He credits his interest in photography to his grandfather who recently passed. “He always wore this Batman-style belt with the digital camera in the pocket, shooting everything throughout my childhood… our photo albums are precious family heirlooms.”

It’s hard not to look at what Sidley has created with The Lake Surfers the same way. He’s capturing impermanent moments—impermanent waves, impermanent weather, everything is shifting in the water, nothing stays the same.

The pandemic forced Sidley to rethink the vagabond lifestyle. A quick search showed Loyalist College in Belleville was one of the few places in the country with a photojournalism program. Sidley enrolled.

“I’d never even heard of Belleville,” he says. Within a few weeks, he walked into his instructor’s office and told him he wanted to go to Wellington to try and find some lake surfers. “I remember him looking at me and going, oh, Wellington, there’s a lot going on there… you might like it.”

Tyler Beatson and Adelaide Utman, who coown Oak Clothing Co. and Surf Club, were some of the first people Sidley met when he visited town looking for surfers. “They have been such huge mentors,” says Sidley. “They helped me get the gear, they’ve pushed me to do everything I’m doing and encouraged me… if it wasn’t for them and their shop and everything they’ve done, I wouldn’t be in the County.”

Beatson features heavily in the book, often collaborating with Sidley on shots.

“Calder has an eye for the art aspect of shooting,” says Beatson. They’ll often regroup every few waves and share feedback on what they’re seeing from their respective spots: Beatson, shivering in the water, and Sidley, shivering on land.

Beatson says he likes to point out technical moments on the wave face —a steep section to carve or walk to the nose of the board. “We get a better surf photo that doesn’t just look like you’re standing on a surfboard, it’s a little more dynamic and technical,” says Beatson.

Beatson and Sidley’s relationship is emblematic of the photographer’s relationship with surfing as a whole, that constant pursuit of a fresh vantage point. He’s been experimenting more with shooting surfers from the water.

“It’s very hard to show what we do… it’s always bigger than it looks (or) you take a photo and it looks like you’re standing on flat water,” says Sidley. “The biggest challenge is to actually figure out a way to show off the waves and how it feels.”

The photojournalist is currently debating a second pressing of The Lake Surfers. Since releasing the book, Sidley says he’s been encouraged to lean into the writing side, including interviews with surfers and profiles. “I’ve got enough in the archives to release another book the same size,” he says. “But it’s the quieter moments— getting ready on the beach in howling winds… the bsides (to) the really big surf shots.”