Twinkletoes

In Canada, everyone skates.  Well it seems that way to us.  There was never any question of us not learning to skate.


We've all been taking lessons, with varying degrees of success.  The kids seemed to start slowly, but all of a sudden are whooshing around, whereas I thought I got the hang of it pretty quickly, but every time I get back on the rink it feels like I've never skated before, so I waste the first 15 minutes learning all over again.  Two falls on the same knee last week just about finished me off and I feel like I've regressed by at least a month.


Talking of lessons, it was interesting to compare the teaching of my adult class and Cluny's - we took it very slowly, but the kids were taught all sort of daredevil steps in their first week which the adult class didn't get anywhere near in 8 weeks!  The kids are fearless, it's so good to see, but as my experience shows, falls for adults can be very painful.


So, where do we skate?  We are truly spoiled for choice.  Here's a list of the rinks near us:

1. Oak Leaf Gardens
2. local municipal park indoor rink
3. local municipal park outdoor rink
4. local municipal park outdoor oval, also used by speedskaters
5. different park outdoor rink
6. indoor rink at large recreation centre over the river (where Cluny and I took our classes)
7. and last, but not least, the world's longest rink, the Rideau Canal Skateway.

all within a kilometer of our house.


The oval turned speedskating rink looks like this:

But the really special ones are the first and the last. Here's a picture of Oak Leaf:

A family build the rink on the spare land next to their house, and have done so since the 1960's.  It's small and very popular, particularly with small kids.  Most seem to come to play hockey (the national obsession) but there are less teenagers there now that the municipal rinks have opened.  


This is what the house looked like in Fall as they started to build it:

And today we found an article about it in the local paper:


http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Warm+memories+cold+Canadian+tradition/4149435/story.html


The canal skateway is one of the great things about Ottawa.


It's been open a couple of weeks in stages - one stage is still closed.  The canal is drained in fall, the fish relocated, and then they wait until they can get at least 30 cm of ice without it thawing.  We had one or two fairly mild days a few weeks ago which delayed the opening, and I can't work out why there's still a section which isn't ready given all the cold weather we've had.  


Anyway, it's not really a problem for us because the sections nearest to us are open and there's little chance of any of us being up to skating the whole length of the canal (7.8 km) - yet.  Lots of people do though - skating to work downtown is very popular, and John has seen a few people catch the bus and then get off at the canal to skate the rest of the way.

Cluny and her friend Emily on our first skate on the canal

With compulsory beaver tails!

We had a skate this morning on the coldest day so far: -23, with a wind chill of -35.  The coldest part was the walk to the canal, and home again, although there was one part of the rink where we were going straight into the wind - I couldn't feel my face and my glasses froze over:

There are changing rooms, toilets and beaver tail stands
placed every couple of km along the canal

Skating is not just Ottawa - everywhere we go there are outdoor public rinks and little rinks set up in people's yards.


We went to Kingston a while ago (on the St Lawrence River overlooking the US of A) and found this one:

Rink outside the Kingston Town Hall

Then in Montreal there's this one in the Old Port area where they've drained part of the river to make this rink.  It was in such a great spot (complete with French pop songs playing over the speakers) I would be a regular if I lived there.

Montreal rink at the Quays of the Old Port