Ottawa’s Rideau Canal Skateway will not open this season

The National Capital Commission says Ottawa’s Rideau Canal Skateway, the world’s largest outdoor skating rink, will not open this season due to warm temperatures.

The organization says in a tweet: “Despite our best efforts, the weather got the best of us for the first time in our history.”

ICE UPDATE ???? | We won’t be able to open the #RideauCanal Skateway this winter. Despite our best efforts, the weather got the best of us for the first time in our history. ????

You’re disappointed. We’re disappointed. Bruce is disappointed. | #OttNews

???? Photo by Dave Chan pic.twitter.com/qzN96sW2sK

— Rideau Canal Skateway (@NCC_Skateway) February 24, 2023

“We wanted this as much as you did, but the weather forecasts were not in our favour,” the NCC said. “Even the cold of the last 24 hours couldn’t make up for this winter’s higher-than-average temperatures, snow and rain, which contributed to a thin and porous ice surface.”

“Until next year,” it concluded with a crying face emoji.

The commission says it has been both assessing and getting ready for the affects of climate change on the internationally renowned winter tourist attraction for several years.

But this is the first time the weather has prevented the 7.8-kilometre stretch through Canada’s capital city from opening at all.

It says the latest tests showed the ice surface remained unsafe to skate on and that any more efforts to change the situation were unlikely to work.

It also says the warmer-than-usual temperatures, snow and rain caused the ice to be thin and porous.

On Feb. 2, the skateway had already experienced a record-setting delay in opening for the season.

“I always skate on it, at least once, twice a week when it’s open,” said Evelyn Burgess, who lives downtown.

“Last year it was open for a really long time, which was really great, and I got out there pretty much every single day.”

Cynthia Luna, a newcomer to Canada, said she was really looking forward to a skate through the capital city this year and she’s saddened by the closure.

“We expected to see that kind of event here,” said Luna.

But with fewer cold days in recent winters, the future of the iconic ice rink is unclear.

At the beginning of the century, Ottawa had an average of 41 days below -15 C.

David Phillips, a senior climatologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, said the models suggest that Ottawa will have just 10 such cold days a year by 2080.

“So we see a dramatic change in both the length of winter and the intensity of the cold,” Phillips said in an interview on Thursday.

For its part, the National Capital Commission said in an online article that it’s considering potential solutions that are used to maintain ice roads.

The ideas including slush cannons, which would pump slush onto the ice early in the season to thicken it, and thermosyphons, which are used in the Arctic to allow cold air flow underneath a building or, in this case, an ice surface.