February 12th to February 27th is the Ottawa Winterlube Festival. All about Canadians getting out enjoying the winter and becoming involved in winter activities. To an Auusie perspective it appears Canadians hate winter. Most seem to hibernate and many just move south for the winter. When we ask what can we do in Canada in the winter the standard reply seems to be "Get out, go to Cuba or Florida or the Carribbean".

But as you can see by the photos many do make an effort to get out and have a good time.

So the first weekend of the Winterlude saw us Aussies visiting the Winterlude Festival. It is quite impressive to watch hundreds of people skating on the Rideau Canal right in the centre of the city. The local word is that the canal is the longest ice skating rink in the world, 7.5km long. Sometimes the Canadians are more like Americans than they would like to admit. Everything has to be the biggest, the longest, the best etc etc in the world!

Having said that the festival was well worth the effort to see. Confederation Park was the setting in Ottawa for a lot of the goings on. There was ice sculpting in progress, ice slides, food stalls, traditional crafts, first nations exhibits etc etc. The ice sculpting was incredible, the detail that those teams put into the pieces was amazing. We watched a guy making rope the traditional way, quite the comedian and Donna and Rowie experienced maple toffee. I was watching my figure!! The maple toffee is made by simply putting a stick on some snow and poring maple syrup over it. The syrup freezes and you eat it off the stick, not bad. There was a genuine Indian teepee set up with First Nations people explaining some of their crafts and uses for hides etc. The food stalls served more traditional style fast foods like poutine, ribs and beaver tails, not a Maccas in sight. The queue for the beaver tails was always many metres long, there must be something special about these beaver tails?

Over the Ottawa River in the city of Gatineau, Quebec, there was also activities so we walked across the bridge to the Jacques Cartier Park where we saw snow sculptures, even longer ice slides and massive kites flying above the frozen river. The walk to the bridge was interesting. We passed the Chateau Laurier Hotel, Parliament Buildings, Notre Dame Basilica (seems to be one of these in every city!), Art Gallery and the Rideau Canal locks.

On our return to Ottawa we diverted via the Bywood Market for a look see and low and behold we discovered a Beaver Tail stall where the queue was only a few metres long. Hang the calories it was time to experience one of these truely Canadian culinary delights. It looked like a flattened doughnut without a hole, it smelt like a flattened doughnut without a hole and it tasted like a flattened doughnut without a hole. But as we all know there is nothing wrong with hot doughnuts, so washed down with a hot coffee on a cold winters afternoon in Ottawa they hit the spot and prepared us for the bus trip home.