Hardcore Winter Fun in Canada

Outdoor skating is a quintessential Canadian winter tradition. The Rideau Canal in Ottawa is famous for being the longest outdoor skating rink in the world. When I was younger, I was eager to take on skating on the canal, but because it was so crowded, the ice was rough and bumpy, and I kept falling over. Now that I'm a middle-aged woman with low bone density, I'm afraid of falling, so I don't skate anymore.

While skating on the canal, which is maintained for tourists, is nice, skating on frozen ponds and rivers nearby is the true Canadian landscape. However, certain conditions must be met to skate on mirror-like open water ice. You need several days of freezing temperatures below -10 degrees Celsius, and it must not snow during that time. That's actually quite difficult. The best ice is 'freshly frozen' ice, but there are safety issues.

It seems there are quite a few accidents where people fall through the ice while trying to take Instagram-worthy outdoor skating photos, so many puddles near cities have been banned for skating.

Even though I don't skate, I absolutely love walking on frozen rivers and lakes! Once it's the dead of winter and the ice is guaranteed not to break, a game I play with my friends is 'playing defector.' This is a game where you immerse yourself in a very northern romance, pretending to be a character crossing the frozen surface of a river that flows along a border to defect to a neighboring country. There are various variations, such as playing defector from the Soviet Union to Finland, or escaping the Siege of Leningrad by walking across Lake Ladoga.

I've clearly read too many spy novels or epic sagas, but the fun of running across the vast ice while saying things like, 'Hurry, before the border guards come!' is great. I'm grateful to my friends who play along with me every year.