The ByWard Market is no longer humming with commerce. The produce stalls have disappeared, fleeing before the dark, cold promise of another Ottawa winter. A few vendors remain, flogging giant bunches of Peruvian asparagus at deep discount prices, or trying to get us excited by maple sugar molded into odd shapes. Probably the most successful peddlars will be those fellows with the tables groaning under the weight of a thousand knitted woolen caps with earflaps. By late December Ottawa looks as if it has been taken over by hoardes of Bolivian shamen who all took out memberships at Mountain Equipment Co-op.
And of course, the first advertising for "Winterlude" is appearing.
The inhabitants of this climate-challenged capital are never eager to surrender to the seasonal inevitable. A November cyclist negotiating the black ice in a parka and gloves will probably be wearing shorts - in April she will be jogging through the slush in snow pants and a T-shirt. Still, people here love their winter, and once they have finally squeezed the last drops of warmth out of Summer, they ferret out all their winter "gear" and head for the great outdoors.
The great, grey, freezing, blowy, snowy, Ottawa outdoors.
Ottawa's claim to Winter fame is the Rideau Canal, which in Winter becomes the much-ballyhooed "World's Longest Skating Rink". It is the focus of Winterlude - the annual Bacchanal for the frozen-toed crowd - the "'Lude-ites". Even now, with the Canal still unfrozen, signs of Winterlude are popping up. A skeletal bandstand grows from the mirky waters just above MacKenzie King Bridge. Changing huts where skaters stow their boots and don their blades are anchored to the Canal walls, afloat for the moment but soon to be frozen in to place. The shacks that sell Beavertails and hot chocolate are being readied. (A Beavertail is not what it sounds like. It is a slab of dough that has been deep-fried and coated with one or another of a variety of flavourings. Lemon and sugar is traditional, but an upscale Beavertail might have a dusting of chipotle cocoa powder). Somewhere in Ottawa, a refrigerated warehouse is accepting shipments of "carving ice" - a specially formulated type of ice that is essentially free of air bubbles - that will be used in the ice carving competitions during festival, which spans three weekends in February.
I am not a huge Winterlude fan, or a Canal fan, I must confess. To me it seems like masochism. Maybe sado-masochism, if you consider the huge numbers of defenseless children who are stuffed each Winter into ill-fitting skates and gigantic snowsuits, all the better to "enjoy" a nice dipsy-doodle down the Canal in -23C weather with a north wind at 35kph blowing unchecked from Ellesmere Island.
In truth, the Canal is not all it's cracked up to be (mostly because it's usually all cracked up). The maintenance crews do their best, but there isn't much they can do about the deep pressure cracks that form a hazardous network of blade-grabbing crevasses. St. John Ambulance patrols prowl the icy route daily, sweeping up the fallen and hustling them to shelters where broken arms, broken ankles, concussions, lacerations, frostbite, and hot cocoa burns are treated with cool professionalism.
Sure, if you get out there early enough, and if the Canal was flooded the night before, and if the wind hasn't come up, and if it is actually open for skaters (because it isn't always open), you can probably have a fantastic, life altering skate. You can be Hans Brinker, or Jeremy Wotherspoon, or Catriona LeMay Doan, or Elvis Stojko, or even Maurice "the Rocket" Richard, if you want (except you can't bring your hockey stick). Your strides will be etched into the crystalline surface, begging comparisons to the best Waterford, the most exquisite Steuben, the finest Swarovski. But before the judges who are watching from the rink side seats in the back of your mind have gotten their bribes straight, and long before they have figured out your artistic impression scores, you will be set upon by the hordes. The ice will cloud and crack and blister, the wind will begin to howl up your leotards, and someone will slap you in the face with a chocolate covered beavertail. The colonic shape of the route will conspire with the wind to freeze your face and incinerate your thigh muscles as you skate for home (no matter which end of the Canal you started at). You will question your sanity, and long before you finally drag yourself back into the change hut you will have mentally scripted your e-Bay ad - "One Pair Ice Skates - Used Once Only. All reasonable offers considered."
Then you will remove the word "reasonable" from the text.
Then you will simply say, "One Pair Skates - Free."
The photo is of the Canal at Dow's Lake during Winterlude 2008 - which means it's "last year". It isn't this cold in Ottawa yet - just a lot of frozen slush to muck through.
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