The ice is nice in Ottawa

Whether it's skating, hockey or carnival, residents and visitors love that frozen stuff

Author: By Stephen Kurkjian, Globe Staff

Date: SUNDAY, December 29, 1996

Page: E1

Section: Travel

Chouinard is a local favorite, and her ranking as the country's top female skater assured a breathtaking performance, but the rapt attention of the crowd in Chouinard and her dozen or so colleagues that night at Canada's free skating championships reflected more than fan enjoyment of a group of athletes or even a single sport.

Whether it's the proclivity of young and old alike to drop everything for an afternoon skate along the frozen canal that cuts through the city's center, their support for their lowly entry in the National Hockey League or even the artistic seriousness with which they judge their winter carnival's ice sculptures, Ottawans take uncommon satisfaction from all sorts of events that take place on or with ice.

A four-day visit to the city and its environs provides some answers as to why. First and foremost, there's the cold. During the height of the winter season, the average temperature hovers at the zero mark, and that's without any wind blowing. While downhill skiing is also very popular, the nearest slope of major consequence -- Calabogie Peaks -- is 90 miles away, so getting one's everyday exercise by strapping on skates is far more accessible for Ottawans.

Imagine if the Charles River was frozen for the entire winter and cleared of snow so that you could skate from your home in the Back Bay or Cambridge close enough to downtown that you could walk to work. Scores, maybe hundreds of Ottawans, get to work that way every day via the Rideau Canal. The city government maintains the 5-mile canal that stretches from Carleton College to the National Arts Center in the middle of the city.

Don't worry if you forget to pack your skates. Booths along the canal rent them ($12 for two hours) as well as child sleighs. There are also vendors along the way selling sandwiches, hot drinks and snacks, including the hometown specialty: steaming, sugary pastries called beaver tails.

Also, don't be concerned about your level of skating proficiency. My 19-year-old son, who accompanied me, and I have spent most of our winter play time in basketball gyms and on ski slopes, not skating rinks, but we were comfortably able to maintain our own pace along the canal's broad expanse and not get into anyone else's way.

A few steps from the canal, in Jacques Cartier Park, there is a proud display of ice and snow sculptures fashioned by amateurs and professionals from as far as China and Australia. The display is part of the Winterlude Festival, Ottawa's celebration of winter, which started out in the 1970s as a small fete on skates but has turned into one of North America's biggest parties on ice.

On three consecutive weekends in February, the city becomes a winter wonderland with fireworks, hot-air ballon flights, laser light displays, skating parties, outdoor concerts, exotic food kiosks and, for the hearty, a triathlon on foot, skates and skis.

``It's the people's way of saying, `We'll not succumb to the cold. We'll enjoy it,' '' said Laurence Wall, senior editor for the Canadian Broadcast System's Ottawa Bureau.

Other Canadian cities closer to Boston may have winter festivals worth attending -- Quebec City is host to a half-million visitors for its Carnaval, and Montreal has its Fete des Neiges, a 10-day pre-Lenten snow celebration, but Ottawans fervently believe that their Winterlude provides the best winter entertainment in the country. But then it's only fitting, as Ottawa is the capital of Canada.

Combined with Hull, its sister city across the river, the National Capital Region boasts a population of nearly 1 million. The people are bilingual -- so don't worry about being challenged by the French language -- as well as friendly and relaxed.

In fact, the city's small-town atmosphere contrasts markedly to Washington. Instead of sticking out in the sea of suits as in Washington, tourists fit in easily with the high-school students, blue collar workers and mothers pushing baby carriages who can be found along most of Ottawa's bustling streets.

Make no mistake, the 10-hour drive it takes to reach the city from Boston is a long haul, and getting there through Montreal's web of highways, overpasses and rotaries takes map-reading skills that thankfully my son inherited from his mother. But Ottawa is worth the trouble, and beyond its winter festivities, it has much more to offer tourists.

If it is true, as one writer noted, that as a country Canada has too much geography and not enough history, that adage is certainly tested by the numerous cultural, historical and governmental sites that proliferate Ottawa.

The best place to start is the highest in the city -- on Parliament Hill -- where a complex of government buildings with their Gothic architecture have become Canada's single most famous landmark. The Parliament was out of session when we were there, so we did not have the opportunity to view firsthand the English-style debate inside the House of Commons, where Prime Minister Jean Chretien and his Cabinet must face tough questioning on their Liberal Party policies by members of the opposition parties.

But with the Parliament out of session, visitors are taken right inside both chambers and provided a close-up view of both House and Senate. Even if the issues that have been debated here may be unfamiliar to most Americans, a real sense of the country's history is evoked from the deep burgundy, leather chairs, the fading murals along the walls of famous scenes involving Canadian military and the 5-foot-long replica of an Elizabethan-age scepter that signifies the British monarch's past authority over the proceedings.

That sense of history is carried over at the city's most elegant hotel, the Chateau Laurier, a block away from the Parliament buildings. A railroad company built the hotel as a palace in 1911 to honor the retiring prime minister, and it is still the best place to take Ottawa's political pulse. On any given day, according to one guidebook, you might see the prime minister's entourage lunching at its fine Wilfred's restaurant, or meet members of Parliament having drinks in Zoe's lounge.

If such luminaries were there for lunch the day that my son and I enjoyed a delicious plate of fusili pasta, I did't notice them, but then it didn't really matter, as we had both met enough politicians in our lives. My real disappointment came in not seeing Yousuf Karsh, the renowned Armenia-born portrait photographer, now retired and in his late 80s, who spends many of his afternoons walking slowly in and around the hotel's lobby.

The oft-repeated advisory that Canadians are fiercely proud of their country's identity comes clear in visits to three of the major museums in Ottawa: the National Museum of Civilization, the National Aviation Museum and the National Gallery of Canada. Reflecting that pride as well as the government's intent on attracting tourists to its capital, the museums all have moved into new quarters in recent years.

A vast structure that cost $225 million to construct, the Museum of Civilization is across the Ottawa River in neighboring Hull but close enough so that one glass wall of the five-story museum provides a panoramic view of Parliament Hill. With its flowing lines and copper domes, the museum presents a comprehensive picture of the country's discovery, settlement and growth by diverse groups. Far beyond the English and French, Canada is speckled with immigrant and native groups, from Jews, Greeks and Russians to native Indians and Inuits. The sagas of many of them are told in imaginative and compelling exhibits, old photographs and reconstructed settings at the Museum of Civilization.

Although it dotes on its Canadian artists, the National Gallery of Art boasts a rich international display that satisfies the interest of the most serious art lover. Not only are vivid paintings by van Gogh, Monet and Picasso on display but also more modern works by Escher, Peterson Ewen and Quincy-born Carl Andre.

The National Aviation Museum houses one of the most impressive collections of vintage aircraft in the world. The delta-shaped building, opened in 1988, displays 50 complete aircraft and countless aviation-related artifacts, such as engines, propellers and flight gear. Exhibits include the Silver Dart, the first plane ever flown in the British Empire -- at Baddeck, Nova Scotia, in 1909.

For information on staying at the Chateau Laurier, call Canadian Pacific Hotels at (800) 828-7447.

Air Canada, Northwest and Delta Business Express all offer service to Ottawa from Boston. Only Delta offers a nonstop flight. Air fare in January, with a Saturday stopover, begins at $262.80 round trip.