Skating On the Rideau Canal by 'scout'
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
To most people I work with, it was pure blasphemy that I had lived in Ottawa for five full years and never skated on the Rideau Canal, known in winter as the world's longest skating rink. It's not that I wasn't interested - I always enjoyed skating as a child - but I just never made the time. This year, I decided it was high time that I gave it a shot. I also had the bizarre notion that if I liked it, I could even try skating to work. I hauled out my skates and had them sharpened, and away I went. Unfortunately, I forgot to ask one very important question: which part about this is supposed to be fun?
Not having grown up in Ottawa, I was not raised with the mythology that skating on the canal is a fun thing to do. I grew up in a big(ger) city, so my skating experience was limited to local skating rinks with smooth surfaces that receive regular maintenance. I never experienced "lake skating" at people's cottages, and my father's only attempt to fashion a skating rink by flooding our backyard was utterly unsuccessful. That being said, I was duly warned that canal skating was a different ball of wax, and that I should not expect it to be like a hockey arena. Apparently, I grossly under-estimated this advice, and put more weight on my co-workers' insistence that skating on the canal is a wonderful and pleasurable experience that I was missing out on.
Full of anticipation, I laced up my skates as I watched dozens of happy skaters pass by. Once I was ready to go, my first few steps were very tentative. After all, I hadn't used my skates in several years, and I expected that it would take a few minutes to remember how the whole thing works. The theory came back pretty quick, but unfortunately, I wasn't able to put it into practice. The bumps and cracks and pot-holes - about which I had been warned - diverted all my attention that might otherwise have been put to use "having fun". I had far more in common with the unstable toddlers than other people my age, who just didn't seem to notice the crevices and lumps that represented impending disaster in my path.
I forged on, in hopes that I just needed to build up some confidence, and then I would begin to enjoy myself. I let this go on for about 30 minutes, when I remembered that I still needed to turn around and go back, and I still wasn't having any fun yet. It took me two full minutes to reorient myself in the other direction, and I slowly skated back to my starting point. During the whole journey, I couldn't shake the feeling that the canal really needs a giant zamboni machine (and perhaps a small miracle) to smooth out the ice. However, nobody around me seemed to notice - they were too busy having fun.
Maybe my expectations were too high, but I can't help but feeling that the canal is not actually the world's longest skating rink, but rather, it is a big chunk of frozen water that people choose to skate on because they grew up believing it is fun. Nevertheless, I think that I'll wait until summer, when I can put my rollerblades on and skate alongside the canal instead of on it.
