Outdoor Skating in Canada
In Canada, outdoor skating on natural frozen lake and ponds is common but not as a method of travel or tourism, rather people with skate in a circular route around the lake, or create an improvised ice hockey rink for a game of "shinny".
However, starting in 1971, the section of the Rideau Canal that runs through the centre of Ottawa, the national capital, has been used as a skating corridor. This has become a major tourist attraction and a popular method of commuting in with Ottawa's locals. In 2011 932,331 people used the skateway. Starting the in 1990s The Forks area of Winnipeg, where two rivers join, has also been used as a skating trail, and by 2008 was longer than the Rideau skateway (though much narrower). Due to natural variations in ice conditions, the Assiniboine Credit Union River Trail, as it is officially called varies in length each year. Similar plans to turn Montreal's Lachine Canal into a skating venue have been discussed since 2000, but were still awaiting the needed funding in 2012.
Read more about this topic: Tour Skating
Famous quotes containing the words outdoor, skating and/or canada:
“Close to the academy in this town they have erected a sort of gallows for the pupils to practice on. I thought that they might as well hang at once all who need to go through such exercises in so new a country, where there is nothing to hinder their living an outdoor life. Better omit Blair, and take the air.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I see Canada as a country torn between a very northern, rather extraordinary, mystical spirit which it fears and its desire to present itself to the world as a Scotch banker.”
—Robertson Davies (b. 1913)