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Hi there, I’m Tobi Nussbaum, the Chief Executive Officer of the National Capital Commission

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and welcome to Capital Stories.

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In today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about the Rideau Canal Skateway, a signature

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Canadian destination in the nation’s capital, of course, that brings joy and laughter and

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sometimes falls, year after year, to so many residents and visitors to the National Capital

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Region.

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It all started in 1971 with a hand shovel and now, over 50 years later, it is the world’s

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largest skating rink.

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So today, we are going to talk a little bit about it with someone who you might recognize

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from, well, all of our channels, really, of social media, Bruce Devine, our Senior Manager

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of Facilities and Programs at the NCC.

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Welcome Bruce.

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Thank you, Tobi.

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Hello.

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I mentioned that we’ve been at this for more than 50 years.

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It might be worth just reviewing what happened in that key winter of 1970–1971.

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The idea, which originated from the NCC’s Chairman at the time, Douglas Fullerton, was

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to see if the NCC could turn this frozen thing into a skating rink.

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And so, as the story goes, on January 18, 1971, he sent a crew out with shovels to try and

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clear a five-kilometre stretch between the National Arts Centre and Bronson Avenue, and

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they succeeded.

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And so, witnessing the success of this pilot project in 1971, 55 years later, 54 years later, we

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now have the world’s largest skating rink at 7.8 kilometres.

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I’m sure it’s hard for you to imagine these days doing that with your crew with hand shovels.

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We’ve got more modern equipment. But before we get to talking about what it takes to maintain

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and operate the Rideau Canal Skateway today, let’s go back to your early days on the Skateway.

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When you were a little boy, anticipating what you would be doing with the rest of your life,

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one doubts that you said, I want to be the senior manager responsible for operating the

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world’s largest skateway—but here you are.

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Can you tell us a little bit about your first seasons working on the Rideau Canal and what

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you had to learn?

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Yes, I’ve got fond memories about that.

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This is my thirteenth year with the Skateway.

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I’ve got more than 35 years of managing special events, and I had no experience with managing

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on the ice rink.

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So, I remember my first day coming at the NCC, thinking of… what have I done, working with

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the world’s largest skating rink.

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I was nervous… really nervous.

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And my fear was, what if somebody goes through the ice?

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So, I had to learn everything.

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And the team that I was surrounded with are just fabulous.

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And they helped me out.

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I learned so much with the contractors as well.

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And over time, we’ve looked to reach some efficiencies in our operations to be better.

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Fantastic.

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So, I’m curious about those.

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So can you speak a little bit to behind the scenes, what goes into preparing and maintaining

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the ice every season?

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Can you take us through to sort of the beginning of when the teams start to work on the ice?

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Well, the full team is on deck in September, in the fall.

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It’s a team of four people.

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And what we start to do there, we fabricate whatever we need to fabricate.

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If we want to have it, we want to change the arch of an entrance.

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We do repair.

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We finish all of our repairs.

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Because coming end of October, Parks Canada, who owns the Rideau Canal, lowers the water

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for us to install all the big assets, the vehicle ramps, 35 staircases, five UA ramps,

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that sort of thing… the chalets, the washrooms, the skate rentals.

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We have a three-week window to do all of that.

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After that, the water level rises to what we call the ice level.

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And we wait for starting to freeze a little bit.

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Once we have a good four or five inches, the ice crew can go on it and start watering it

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and build the ice.

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And eventually, we’re close to the opening, and then we deploy all the small equipment.

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Over 200 benches, picnic tables, fire pits, you name it, maps, and so forth.

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And then we’re into the daily management.

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We have a checklist every day.

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We make sure that it’s safe

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and we work with all the contractors.

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Once everybody’s on deck, we’re over 225 people working to do the garbage, the clean-up of

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the washrooms, the fire pits, the management of the ice.

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And come spring, we take everything out.

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And summer, we start re-planning, we repair things, and the whole cycle starts again.

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Okay.

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Like Sisyphus pushing the rock up the mountain, it all starts again in September.

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Now, we’re talking a lot about ice and the process of maintaining the ice, but of course,

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the Rideau Canal is much more than the ice.

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So why don’t you tell us a little bit about what happens in terms of activities, in terms

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of animation, and the logistics that go into making sure that people can buy a BeaverTail

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every year.

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Yes.

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This is an internationally known, I don’t know if you realize that… I’ve been receiving

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calls over the years from Russia, Washington, Toronto, Montreal, as to what’s our project

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all about, and how do we go about this?

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And meeting these tourists on the Skateway, talking to us about what a great experience

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this is.

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Of course, the experience is skating between these two walls.

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There’s something to be said about that.

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Right in the heart of the nation’s capital, with the buildings surrounding us, and as

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you said earlier, with the memories, but everything has to end with the BeaverTail.

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It’s part of the—even families—the main motivation is, let’s go for a skate ride,

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and then we come back, we’ve got to have that BeaverTail.

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The lineups are incredibly long, but these guys have a good operation, and it goes very

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quickly.

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So, it’s not just BeaverTails, of course, there are other food and beverages.

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So, what would be someone’s options if they’re on the canal, and feeling hungry or thirsty?

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Yes, that’s right.

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Asian food was offered, regular hamburgers, and there was a beer offering as well.

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There was a trial, which was very nice.

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I forgot the exact word, but you receive your beer, and there was an iron in the fire pit,

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and they were freezing it in the beer, and it was bubbling, and people really appreciated

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it, and it was an experience to do that on the ice.

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So there’s a distillery as well, it was at Concord, so that typically is the menu offered.

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So, most of the year, people don’t like drinking warm beer, but having a nice warm beer in

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the middle of the winter skating season can actually be a good thing.

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Obviously, there have been some challenges for the Rideau Canal Skateway, particularly

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as we see the climate change, and the 2023 season, of course, did not go well.

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We weren’t able to open the canal.

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What did we learn from that experience?

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Obviously, Mother Nature was not our friend—warm temperatures, lots of thawing and freezing.

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What did we learn from that, and how are we adapting to climate change in terms of our operations?

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Typically, when we do ice cores, we look at the ice quality, and look at the various layers.

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And that year, unfortunately, we got rain, freezing rain, some snow, not enough cold,

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and water wasn’t captured between two layers of ice.

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And that was poor quality, couldn’t sustain weight at all.

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So, we start having our thinking cap on and working with lighter equipment, which we put

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in good hands last year, whereas we started to work with ETVs instead of pickup trucks

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and big tractors.

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But luckily enough, we didn’t have a lot of snow last year, because it’s still a challenge.

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How can we get rid of the snow with smaller equipment, but that they perform very well?

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So that’s something we’re going to look into.

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Another lesson learned, as a trial, it’s walking—offering a walking corridor.

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It was a trial last year, and this year we formalized it, and we had a corridor set up,

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and people enjoyed it so much.

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Elderly people loved it as well, because it wasn’t slippery, but still they could walk

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between these two walls on the canal.

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So those are the things that we’re learning.

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We’re learning… our biggest challenge is the water being discharged through the drains

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is warm water.

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So, it’s warmer than the ice, it creates some of the challenges, and the amount being discharged,

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especially downtown at Rideau, is a big challenge for us.

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And we’ve been working closely, I know, with Carleton University, with a couple of researchers

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and profs there.

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Can you speak a little bit to some of the experiments, even if they weren’t successful.

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What kind of ways are they looking at in terms of helping us either form ice earlier or keep

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the ice in shape longer?

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I had met 15 professors, and two of them wanted to do this research program with us.

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So, in 2023, in December, the hypothesis is how can we extend our season?

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And we were in a paradigm in thinking of working towards the end, how can we extend it?

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And then we’ve changed our ideas through consultation, and it’s at the beginning of the year if we

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have to extend it.

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So, with the slush cannon, we try to create, through slush… it’s an air machine that you

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put water in there, then it sends out some small crystals in the air, and then it falls

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underwater and creates slush and eventually ice.

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Though we did some trials in 2023 in December, twice, we managed to create 0.5 centimetres

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of ice.

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Now the challenge and the team’s going to look at that, the researcher, is how can we

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make that more efficiently, costly, rentals, logistics?

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Because we use potable water, as I said, the water is warmer in the canal, so we use cold

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water.

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There’s only one fire hydrant near the canal.

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The second test, we trucked the water.

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So there’s the logistics behind all of that.

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But it looks that it’s working.

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But in all these scenarios, we need the cold, if it’s not cold.

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One thing we got, it’s proven now, we always felt that when we read the weather forecast

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and it calls for a minus 10 overnight, for us, on the canal, it’s two degrees warmer.

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So for us, we work with minus eight, minus seven.

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So sometimes we don’t have enough cold to freeze what we’re watering.

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And one of the professors, his name is Cole, what he was telling me, and he’s still going

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to reaffirm his numbers, but because of the warm water, we all know that the water freezes

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at zero degrees.

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It appears that us, it starts around minus two.

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And this is going to look into that to tell us how truthful this is, but that seems to

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be the modelling that we’re getting.

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Yeah, that’s interesting because you mentioned the warmer water under the ice and the explanation

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for that in part is that you have storm sewers from the neighbourhood draining into the canal

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right closer to the downtown portion.

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And from the salt of the roads, that’s more brackish water.

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It freezes at a warmer temperature. Sorry, it doesn't freeze at zero degrees, it freezes

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at a colder temperature.

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And for that reason, because people often ask us, why can’t the downtown portion be

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opened as quickly as the portions further south?

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And I think you’ve just given us the answer, which is the water isn’t necessarily warm

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enough to freeze.

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We don’t get the thickness that we require.

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Is that about right?

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That’s about right.

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There’s one more information I can tell you about the Laurier drain that we call it.

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The drain itself, the pipe, has a radius of five feet.

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And I remember from our data, December 17, 2023, I think it's ’23, there was

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a big flush of water that came out of there.

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The professor told me it’s the amount of water that came out of there equals nine Olympic

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swimming pools.

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From Laurier Bridge to kilometre zero, it’s like if you change the whole volume of water

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5.5 times.

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Wow.

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It’s massive.

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Yeah.

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So, we try to manage that, that number of water discharge.

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We don’t have that often, but it does create a challenge.

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And this is why we have some difficulties in that area.

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Right.

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So, I think what I’m hearing is we’re doing our best to adapt to climate change.

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We’re working with partners like researchers at Carleton University to try and extend the

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season, to try and get ice formed earlier.

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But at the end of the day, it’s going to be an uphill battle, particularly as we look

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at long-term weather patterns and forecasts for, of course, a warming climate.

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One of the things I know we’ve talked about within the NCC is whether we could ever have

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a portion of the Rideau Canal Skateway frozen using pipes, very similar to refrigerated

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skating rinks, and that would be a massive endeavor.

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It would cost a lot of money, it would take a lot of study to look at the feasibility.

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But do you think at the end of the day, the Rideau Canal Skateway is worth saving?

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Do you think it’s something that we should be looking at in order to ensure that in

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future generations, we have this incredible asset?

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Or do you think it’s best to throw our hands up and say, you know what, we’re going to

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have to do whatever Mother Nature delivers?

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I think we have to do anything we can to keep it.

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It’s this icon, as I said earlier, it’s internationally known, nationally as well.

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It creates so much memories.

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And just looking at this year, we had the 1.1 million visits.

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As I was skating, I was listening to people and the laughter that I heard, the family

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stories; the people were just relaxing and having fun.

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And in the heart of the nation’s capital, it’s part of our DNA.

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So I think it’s worthwhile making the effort to keep it.

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Yeah, I think you make an important point.

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I couldn’t help but notice this year, with a very successful season, what were we, 52

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days, that it really, to me, changed the feeling of the Capital.

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People were excited.

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I think it helped to animate the downtown core.

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I spoke to restaurant managers who said business was better because people were attracted to

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the downtown core and wanted to skate.

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And it just seemed, as you said, that that feeling of joy permeated throughout the region,

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especially given our numbers were well over a million visitors.

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And so I don’t disagree with you.

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I do think, despite the challenges, it’s something that we have to look at.

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We have to innovate.

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We have to figure out how we can ensure this is an asset that’s available to future generations.

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And I also want to thank you and the team, because I think things like the walking trail

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and giving people an opportunity to experience a very special thing, as you say, it’s this

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piece of ice between two walls.

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And it’s very special to be out there with your fellow citizens experiencing this on cold

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but hopefully sunny days.

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And so I think on behalf of everyone in the National Capital Region and particularly within

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the NCC, Bruce, I want to thank you for your work and your willingness to be out there

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on social media explaining the operations of the Rideau Canal Skateway to everybody.

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And I am thankful for the work you do.

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And I wish you much luck with the upcoming season.

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And let’s hope this season is as good.

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If not, maybe we can hope for better than the last one.

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So, all the best.

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And again, thank you very much for joining me today as well.

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Looking forward to it.

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Thank you for having me.

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All the best.