Rideau Canal Skateway closes for the season

Time to pack away the skates: The Rideau Canal Skateway has closed for the season after a successful 52 days and 1.1 million visits, reported CityNews. Crews were seen on the skateway Monday removing the decorative pine trees and information signs. 

By the numbers: The canal first opened on Jan. 11, and by the next week, the entire stretch was opened. A more traditional Canadian winter meant Capital residents were able to lace up their skates for the first time in a few years. Last year the skateway had only 10 days of being open, and in 2022/2023, it didn’t open at all. 

This was the longest skating season since the 2018/2019 year. In the last decade, only four years have seen the canal season extend into March. 

• “Highlights of the season included the unfurling of a giant Canadian flag on the 60th anniversary of our beloved maple leaf as part of the National Flag Day celebrations and the addition of dedicated walking lanes that allowed even more people to enjoy this truly Canadian winter experience,” the NCC said, according to CTV. 

Despite not being branded as a main attraction to Winterlude, the winter festival also saw lots of success. This year Canadian Heritage didn’t list the canal as one of its four official sites for winter play. In fact, it was only mentioned once in the three-week list of programming, reported the Kitchissippi Times. 

Ottawa saw ideal winter weather conditions this year, says NCC 

Bruce Devine is the senior manager for the National Capital Commission, who is responsible for Rideau Canal Skateway. He never imagined he’d still be working when warm weather meant the canal wouldn’t open at all. 

Despite being “thrilled” with the cold sun-zero temperatures which began in January and lasted until a couple weeks ago, Devine said they are exploring new ways to freeze the ice surface. 

• “In years past we’d water the canal and wait for it to freeze by itself, and eventually get rid of the snow. That was easy. But for the last 15 years we changed the approach by flooding the snow at the beginning of the year,” Devine told the Lookout. “By flooding it we compact it so much that the white ice, if it’s free of air bubbles, is as good as clear ice. It permits us to build ice thickness faster.”

Looking ahead: The NCC is also working with a Carleton University research program who is collecting data on the environment and ice growth of the canal, hoping to find solutions to this looming problem, reported Capital Current. 

Despite the heat of climate change, snow is also a concern for the canal. Its thickness worsens skating quality because it acts like a blanket, preventing cold air from reaching the ice. To target this issue, the Carleton team created a snow robot, which is similar to a small-scale snowblower. It was created with 3D printing by mechanical engineering students. 

• “We can use that robot to test out the device on the ice so we can understand how the systems work in the cold [and] how the systems work to throw snow,” said Shawn Kenny, a professor of geomechanics at Carleton.