Is this the end of the Skateway season?

The rain and warm weather over the weekend didn't help. The NCC closed the canal, of course, but when the thermometer dropped to minus-16 last night, we had hopes that Monday would dawn with enough ice on the Rideau Canal to support skating for another week or two. Alas, it doesn't look good.  The canal wasn't opened to the public today. It's going down to minus-13 tonight, but there's no sign on the NCC site that they have any hopes to reopen. 

At noon today, the air was cold but the sun was warm.

So far, the winter of 2015-16 brought a total of 25 skates -- not all of them on the Skateway, of course. Every year there's time put aside for a father-son skate around Family Day, and we managed to go out on a day when the NCC was clearing the snow from the 53 cm. that hit us the day before. It made for an interesting skate!

Snow was too deep to put the boots under the bench. In fact, the snow rose up over the bench.

NCC crews hard at work clearing 53 cm of snow.

But the snow keeps coming...

And coming...

Father and son on their annual canal skate together.

And then it's time for Jacob to go to work.