But before we say goodbye to the skating season on the Rideau Canal Skateway, I want to give a big thank you to the NCC crews who worked through the night to groom the ice and get it ready for skaters the next day.

The National Capital region's annual winter festival began the first weekend of February, and stretched on for three weeks.  It's been a great time -- big crowds, fun events. I wish I had taken in some of the concerts and viewed the ice sculptures and seen yesterday's dragonboat races on ice! What I did get to see was Hockey Day in Canada, in which over 150 games of shinny were placed on the canal between 8 and 9 a.m. yesterday. 

here's much that can be managed and controlled in hosting a kilt skate -- cake, hot chocolate, entertainment, swag. What lies beyond our control, of course, is the weather. As Rabbie Burns might have said, "The best-laid plans of mice and kilt skater gang aft agley."

The kilt skate gods blessed Calgary with above-zero temperatures on Sunday -- but not so warm that the refrigerators coils could keep a hard ice surface at Calgary Olympic Plaza.

Calgary's third annual kilt skate will be held this Sunday, February 12 at the Olympic Plaza from noon until 4 p.m.. Calgarians seem determined to wrest from Saskatoon the title of Kilt Skate Capital of Canada.