When I exited The Bay, he was standing here, playing the harmonica. I stood here for a minute, looking at him. I grabbed the camera which was slung over my shoulder and our eyes met briefly. He nodded, still playing. He first slowly turned on his side to show me the cat perched on his shoulders, safe from my camera’s peering eye. I smiled and waited. Eventually, he looked straight into my eyes. I snapped two pictures quickly, gave him a couple of bucks and walked away.

Just a few weeks ago, it was all ice and snow in Canada’s national capital. The weather had been mild by Canadian standards but we were still shoveling snow and wearing winter boots. We attended the Winterlude festival and we were skating (or eating beaver tails…) on the Rideau Canal.
And suddenly, it got warm. It surprised us all.

Winterlude may be over, but the Rideau Canal, our national landmark, is still open for skating. Downtown Ottawa, I keep on seeing passers-by casually carrying a pair of skates in the hands or on their shoulders, heading to the longest skating rink in the world (okay, I know some may argue it’s not!). The crowd on weekends is pretty impressive!

This weekend marks the end of the Winterlude festival (but sadly, not the end of winter yet). I found myself hanging around in Confederation park, where it all started a couple of weeks ago, thinking I will miss the ice sculptures.

Ottawa has ice sculptures, Québec has giant snow ones. The theme of the national Snow Sculpture Competition for this year was “winter fun”. Each team was given a huge 3.7 m x 4.9 m block of snow and beautiful winter themed art pieces were created.