Ice Hut No. 793 - Rimouski, Fleuve Saint-Laurent, Quebec, 2015. (Richard Johnson / icehuts.ca)

Canada loves their ice fishing and the passion is evident every winter when dozens of colorful and quirky ice fishing huts pop up on frozen lakes across the country. Toronto-based photographer Richard Johnson has documented these architectural gems for the last nine years, photographing more than 850 ice huts in the process, and capturing an evolving icon of Canada's winter landscape.

Johnson has braved Canada's cold winters, 36-hour drives, and bumpy ferry rides across sheets of ice to photograph ice huts, the tiny shelters used for fishing on lakes and bays, in almost every Canadian province. He has found that it's actually when the weather is bad that it creates the ideal conditions for his photos. "I try to get out when it's overcast and snowy, I stay home when it's sunny," Johnson told weather.com. "I get a nice winter-gray feel to the photographs."

The effect in all of his photos captures the general isolated, shivery-cold atmosphere of ice fishing, but as Johnson, who is primarily an architectural photographer, travels across the country, he has also found regional differences in the huts. "Saskatchewan is the most interesting as they have the highest per capita ownership of pick-up trucks and the huts have to fit in the back of the trucks to be driven to the location so they have a distinctive notch on the underside. It's quite a unique thing. In Quebec, there are a lot of trailer-based huts and fishing is more of a family activity, and they can stay overnight."

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Some huts are designed to adapt to the weather of the region, as well. "If you look at New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, the huts are pretty tiny and the reason is they have to bring them on and off [the site] more frequently because of the weather," Johnson said. "They're closer to and surrounded by the ocean."

Johnson has also seen trends in the construction and design of ice huts, citing temporary, pop-up tent structures as examples. "The big plywood boxes, the trailers, there are less and less of them actually because what happens now is the weather gets warmer, they start to sink in a little bit, and there are issues about taking them [out] when it gets too warm, it's less convenient." He also seen more and more fishermen use solar panels on their huts, and cameras to see where the fish are.

This season, anglers had less time to spend in the huts or out on the ice to fish. "I think [the season is] all wrapped up now," he said. "It was a slow start and it kind of ended quickly. Rather than two months in the middle, it has been reduced to three-and-a-half to four weeks."

While Johnson has also photographed ice villages, which "are more aboutcommunity and the landscape," his images of ice huts spotlight the isolation of fishing. "Fishing is a funny thing, it can be a lonely kind of introspective place, you just spend five hours by yourself," he said. "America has a lot of fishing competitions ... they love their competitions, but here in Canada, we just fish for fun."

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