Winter Stations WATCH installation set to welcome spring with special sunrise sight on morning of March 20
By JOSHUA McGINNIS
Fans of spring can rejoice in celebrating this year’s spring equinox on Thursday, March 20, at 5:01 a.m. by heading down to the Winter Stations installations on Woodbine Beach for a special sunrise sight.
The viewing area in the installation WATCH faces east towards Lake Ontario and is designed to capture the first equinox of spring by aligning perfectly with the sun and allowing rising sunlight to be framed through the viewing gateway.
“As the morning sun crests above Lake Ontario’s horizon, a new day dawns on a crisp morning, and a wood canvas basks in the light. WATCH reflects on the specific point in time that it and visitors are within. The large, canted façade acts as a leaning respite for watchers of the sunrise and lake,” said designer Trey Horne in a Winter Stations news release.
“Facing due east, WATCH is a solar-aligned structure anticipating the equinox. Just as ancient civilizations marked the Earth in ways to signify the time in the year and an important place, so too does WATCH. Three metal lines embedded in the sand follow the shadows throughout three days: the day Winter Stations opens, the equinox, and the day Winter Stations closes. The A-framed structure captures the equinox in Toronto as the architecture becomes perfectly aligned with the sunrise when light spills in a straight line through the open threshold.”
An equinox occurs when the sun appears directly above the equator instead of in the north or the south. During this time, day and night are the same length. The equinox occurs twice a year, once in spring and once in fall. The spring equinox for 2025 takes place on March 20 at 5:01 a.m. in Toronto. The fall equinox will take place on Sept. 23.
This year’s Winter Stations began on Feb. 17, and will continue until the end of this month.
Including WATCH, this year’s Winter Stations features a total of six art installations from artists around the world.
The other five installations along the west end of Woodbine Beach between Ashbridges Bay Park and the Donald D. Summerville Olympic Pools are:
Slice of Sun – by Cláudia Franco, Mariam Daudali, and Tom Byrom of Portugal
Parade – by Jesse Beus (U.S.A.)
Ascolto – by Ines Dessaint and Tonin Letondu (France)
Peak – by students from the University of Waterloo School of Architecture
Solair – by Toronto Metropolitan University’s Department of Architectural Science
For more details on Winter Stations, please visit https://winterstations.com/
