Winterlude 2011

We came back to Canada just in time to take a peek at the 2011 edi­tion of the Win­ter­lude, our yearly win­ter fes­ti­val. This was Winterlude’s last week-end and even though some ice sculp­tures par­tially melted because of a warmer weather spell last week, the crowd was here.

In The Dead of the Winter

Com­ing back from the trop­ics reminded me how harsh win­ter in Canada can be, and how hard it can be to adapt to this unique chal­lenge. Yet, because I’ve been liv­ing there for a few years, I’m pre­pared and within a few min­utes of land­ing in Ottawa, I was wear­ing my full win­ter armour, com­plete with gloves and a hat.

A Creepy Winter Night

Dur­ing sum­mer, days are long, humid and sunny and peo­ple make the most of it by engag­ing in as many out­door activ­i­ties as pos­si­ble. But once a blan­ket of snow falls and the days get shorter, we all become hob­bits. Sud­denly, noth­ing is more appeal­ing than a cup of hot choco­late, a movie and lay­ers of clothes and blan­kets. Peo­ple are less chatty and more reserved—like if the cold had drained all the energy from them and what lit­tle they have left was used to fight winter.

Winter Fun

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.

Ice Sculptures At Confederation Park

And here are some of the sculp­tures that are at Con­fed­er­a­tion Park dur­ing Win­ter­lude. The ice carvers did a pretty good job in my opin­ion… amaz­ing what you can do with a few blocks of ice and a chainsaw!

Ice Carvers At Work

Win­ter­lude, Ottawa’s annual win­ter fes­ti­val, started last week-end. It’s very cold and sunny right now in the nation cap­i­tal and for once, no ones com­plains about it. Cold weather means that the Rideau Canal Skate­way is open and that Winterlude’s ice and snow sculp­tures won’t melt.

The Great Melt

After the great freeze, we woke up to the great melt. The weather was a bit warmer and all the ice accu­mu­lated had started to melt.

Trees were lit­er­ally shed­ding ice. Every blast of wind shook the tree limbs, coated in ice — it sounded like a wind chime. We were lucky: no power line snapped in our neighborhood.

Freezing Rain

We got a bad win­ter sur­prise today when we woke up to heavy freez­ing rain this morn­ing. Yuck.

Freez­ing rain is pretty unique to very cold coun­tries. When sur­face tem­per­a­tures are below freez­ing, rain­drops freeze upon impact with any object they encounter. The result­ing ice accu­mu­lates to a thick­ness of sev­eral cen­time­ters and it coats just about anything.