OTTAWA -- Rideau Canal Skateway
Sure, the kids could skate. They didn't play hockey, but we'd been going around and around the local arena for years. Two kids, seven years of circling and a dozen boxes of Robaxacet later, and three months ago we discovered our six-year-old had never skated outdoors. "What?!" Jack cried when confronted with the sight. "You can skate outside??"
I suddenly realized we weren't Canadian enough. You can't just teach your kids to skate, you have to teach them to love it in the open-air, and on natural ice.
Since our big-city backyard is the size of a postage stamp (no point in flooding), we set out on that quintessentially Canadian family trip: To Ottawa, to skate - outside, and in a straight line no less - on the Rideau Canal.
You've got to pick your teaching moments, and the first weekend of Winterlude (the festival runs until Feb. 21) seemed like a good time to start. At least there'd be lots of visual and culinary distractions along the ice - sugary Beavertails and steaming piles of poutine can improve just about any one's mood.
We set out on Saturday afternoon, the kids buoyed by the adventure and mild, sunny weather, and I by my own happy memories of Winterludes past. And then we got on the ice. The crowds we could handle, but the canal was a Zamboni-free zone and it would take some time to find our natural-ice legs.
In hindsight, maybe we shouldn't have explored Snowflake Kingdom in Gatineau - with its free downhill ski lessons, tubing, ice slides and sleigh rides - before hitting the canal. Parks Canada had us tromping about in metal snowshoes - and even dared us to "snowshoe" as one by strapping the four of us onto two planks of wood. Family harmony did not ensue. Time to find some chocolat chaud and regroup back at the hotel.
The beauty of the Fairmont Chateau Laurier - besides its storied past and the glorious art deco pool that made us feel like we were starring in an Esther Williams picture - is its location at the top of the skateway. You can walk out of the lobby and onto the ice in less than five minutes. This would be critical at the end of (what was for us) a marathon glide.
Only we didn't so much glide as stumble, slip and fall.
Free of lawsuit-leery arena rules, Bethany was happy to let her hair down and skate helmet-free. She adjusted to this new ice easily. Jack was another matter. He barrelled ahead, hit his first crevice 10 seconds later and took a sliding swan dive across the ice. This he actually enjoyed. Until it happened again. And again. After a nasty face plant, he'd had enough: "I hate this ice!"
Maybe we'd be stuck in arenas all winter after all. It was time to find that poutine hut and the ice sculpture garden at Confederation Park, for nothing distracts like watching chainsaws flying through blocks of ice. Later, on our way back to the hotel, a merry band of storytellers stopped us in our tracks. They were dressed as woodsmen and drew us in to the campfire with colourful stories and rip-roaring French-Canadian folk songs. So what if one of the tales was about a man-eating monster that lived under the Rideau Canal - at least Jack wasn't complaining about falling down any more.
Sunday dawned with a new plan of attack. We would taxi down to the skateway's end and meander back along the ice. We'd stop at every exhibit booth and likely set a new record in Beavertails consumed in one day - whatever it took.
The fresh air worked its magic and we were all sturdier on our skate blades. We twirled around a photography exhibit on Dows Lake, whirled over to a demonstration on pioneer camping techniques, and Jack even zipped through an obstacle course. We played freeze-tag with new-found confidence, and even skated backward (or tried to). It wasn't all smooth skating - hitting a pothole with your skate is as bone-jarring as hitting one with your car - but we knew to look out for them now.
Rounding that last corner with our hotel looming in the distance, Jack took off like a shot. He'd finally found his outdoor-ice groove - and he knew there was one more Beavertail shack left to hit.
Globe Travel stayed as a guest of the Fairmont Château Laurier.