The subversive quality of walking on water

Travail finale/(bri)collage

Ice separation from the shore along the Rideau River

You walk down the street with skates in hand, a bus passes by, and you grin with the knowledge that this will get you downtown much faster. You descend a flight of stone stairs that bring you to the edge of Colonel by Drive. The access point to the canal is just across the road. You wait as the cars speed by for a chance to cross. Yellow road signs hang on lamp posts with an illustration of two people carrying skates. Once across you walk down the rubber covered steps onto the ice. Seated on a bench you take off your boots and lace up your skates. Your fingers are numb, and you make every attempt to move quickly. With your skates on you push yourself out to the skateway. Gliding along your blade carves itself into the ice. It is Tuesday morning and there are not many people out, not like a weekend. You are heading downtown; the wind is blowing against you. Snow is falling and blowing into your eyes. You narrow your gaze, and you see the snow pile onto your eyelashes. The wind is biting, and you are pushing off each leg with more strength than usual. You can feel the bumps and cracks and snow under your feet. And you trust yourself to react quickly if you trip and to balance over any uneven spots in the ice. You wind your way through people and look ahead for where the snow has been cleared. You pass under Pretoria Bridge, and you know the wind is only going to get stronger and sharper. From here until the canal curves the wind tunnels into you. Past the curve the wind dies down. You move swiftly along the ice. And a feeling of exuberance comes over you as you pick up speed. You can hear the cut of your blade in an even rhythm. And it vibrates through your feet.  

The Rideau Canal on December 3rd, holes from rocks and snow thrown on the ices — an assessment of its integrity, pure enjoyment of breaking the ice?

Notice the faint lines of snow on the ice indicating the direction of the wind. Also, the fuzzy softer areas of ice and bubbles under the surface.

In the fall of 1970 municipal staff were directed to conduct a feasibility study on the use of the Rideau Canal as a skateway. By December they concluded “that clearing the canal for wintertime skating would never be practical” (Boswell, 2024). A month later the National Capital Commission (NCC) opened the skateway for its first season. The debates about the value and feasibility of skating on the canal extend much earlier than 1971 and extend to the present. Despite these debates, the skateway has become a quintessential Ottawa feature and tourism attraction. So much so that in 2022 the NCC partnered with Carleton University to conduct research on the canal with the aim to prolong and maintain its use in the face of climate change. In 2023 the skateway did not open for the first time in its history. This, perhaps futile endeavor, demonstrates the valorization of the skateway. It has become a part of Ottawa’s identity – that it is the longest skating rink in the world (Boswell, 2024). Late at night and early in the morning people work to clear and flood the ice.

Adaptation and mitigation plans are heavily discussed with respect to climate change and the various effects felt around the world. Mostly, these concern protections for human life and property. The attempts to effectively research a way out of non-freezing conditions in the case of the skateway is perhaps superfluous by comparison. Climate change poses a significant threat to the winter tourism industry, like the skateway. Natalie Knowles, Daniel Scott, and Robert Steiger (2023) present the “(mal)adaption” of the ski industry in Ontario, for example. With less predictable winter conditions and less snowfall, ski areas have been increasing their use of snowmaking (1614). This requires high amounts of water and energy. There already exists some restrictions on water use for snowmaking, in the Niagara Escarpment for example (1625). However, as the authors of this study suggest, changing water use and need may increase or cause conflict locally where there are ski areas (1626). This increased reliance on snowmaking demonstrates capitalisms resilience and malleability. Despite this, as Dipesh Chakrabarty (2017) argues, climate change is “larger than the spatio-temporal scales involved in the analysis of capitalism or globalization” (31). Meaning that despite all efforts adapting to climate change will be futile under capitalism. Chakrabarty contends that no one will be unaffected, including the wealthy. He concedes that the distribution of the effects of climate change will be felt more greatly by the poor, but the impact will reach all of humanity (35). Thus, winter tourism demonstrates how the implications of climate change supplant capitalist malleability and how adaptation for the wealthy – at least in the immediate – may in some respects look entirely different to the effects facing the poor. By this I mean that effects that threaten lives are very different to those that threaten leisure. This is not to discount that floods, fires, and other extreme events can equally reach the wealthy today. Rather, it is to highlight how winter has been commodified and tied to a particular identity and class. It seems likely that winter will increasingly become a luxury and an indicator of wealth.  

It is a cold and snowy winter. The sun shines brightly casting a blinding sheen over the snow-covered ice. People walk on its frozen surface leaving behind footprints and ski tracks, traces of where they have been. There are paw-prints of various sizes and somehow, even unseen, the presence of animals in the city is more noticeable. You trudge through the snow to edge of the river with your long and cumbersome skies and poles in hand. Dried reeds jut up through the ice. This is your first assessment of the ice. Can it hold you? Is it safe enough or will you be carried away by the frigid current? You exhale and your breath freezes in cloud. Your nose tingles and in this moment, you regret the lighter layers you put on in anticipation of being warmed by your own movement. You notice other ski tracks on the surface. Along the shore and right across to the other side. You step out on the ice and clip into your skis. With each kick and glide you are propelled along this seasonal surface. As you approach the beechwood bridge the footprints and ski tracks begin to trail off, some remain, and you step into the tracks made by another skier. Further along you consider the last convenient place to get of the river before the Montreal Road bridge. Thinking of your last ski and the awkward walk-in ski boots on salted pathways, the intersection and the inconvenient return to the river, you stay as you are and continue. The ice under the bridge is smooth and snowless. There are two puddles on either side where water drips down from the road above. You are more careful here. Careful not to fall, not to scratch your skis. And passing under the bridge there is the feeling of a sly satisfaction that comes over you. Further upstream you are confronted by the small rapids in front of Strathcona Park. Open water. You continue skiing. You are judging at every instance as you approach how close you can get. How far out is the ice stable? There are no footprints to guide you here. You get off and on to the pathway. Conveniently, this part of the pathway has not been cleared, and you know that within a short distance you will be on groomed tracks and trails for much of the remainder of your ski. When you pass under the Smyth Bridge you look out for a place to cross back onto the river.

See Rideau River ice management ☞

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And Here

This has been an unusual winter in Manitoba. It is cold – that is not unusual – but there has been very little snow. When you arrive at the lake the ice stretches out in front of you. It glistens in the light. And it is clear with the exception of a few small snow drifts scattered sporadically atop the surface. You can see someone seated in the distance, waiting for a fish to bite. You have come to this lake many times in your life, but you have never seen conditions like this. You can tell this ice will be ideal for skating. First, you go out a ways from the shore and drill a hole in the ice with an auger. The auger crunches through the ice to the water below. It is not very thick. In fact, its thin enough that maybe you ought to worry, maybe you ought not to be out here. A snowmobile drives past and puts you at ease. You fill the pails with water and return up the hill to the cottage. Later you’ll skate.

Later arrives and you rush down to lace up your skates. You push off one foot and then the other and you can feel the smooth, even surface beneath you. You wind freely along the contours of the lake. Coming to a small peninsula, there is a group of men fishing on the ice. They warn you to watch out for their fishing holes and you nimbly avoid a wet foot. Beyond them is a large open bay and the thrill of this serendipitous perfection. In this moment this is all there is. The trees sparkle and the setting sun casts a warm glow over the ice. And this is such an expanse, and you could skate forever. You can easily reach all of the islands. You could cover every nook and cranny of this frozen body. As you glide along you press into the air so that your cheeks become tinged by the cold. And you lie down in the middle of the bay with the knowledge that these conditions may never come to you again. You can hear the lake singing beneath the surface. A crack sends out a loud thrill from somewhere on the surface. A bubble rises and is caught in a thud. Even in the ice, you melt into this moment.

I cannot deny my own affinity for ice – for frozen waterways and bodies. I was raised in a city that makes it part of its identity and by a family who are obsessed with skiing across such surfaces until slush hampers their way. And how could I not have this affinity? I find it difficult to reorient my perspective, even momentarily. For this reason, this project has probably missed some less enthused dimensions of frozen waterways. I have chosen to present frozen waterways through three that are familiar to me. An embodied approach, the likes of which Tim Ingold (Citon, Walentowitz, 2012), and Monica Nadegger, Outi Rantala and Peter Varley (2025) purport, demands a relationship to the places described. I have attempted to draw the reader into this embodiment, if only by using the second-person point of view.

Anti-snow spray in Frosty Returns (1993)

Frozen waterways are a subversion of the norm and serve as an example that hampers capitalism. That freezes it, if momentarily. The Rideau Canal has demonstrated how capitalism has commercialized the winter weather. However, climate change puts winter tourism at risk. Less commercially viable frozen waterways are largely ignored – this is not a constant but seasonal. In their risky and useless appearance one can wander undisturbed along its surface. As on the Rideau River where it feels like a secret tunnel across the city. Chakrabarty posits that climate change will supplant capitalism and globalization; its reach is that great. I agree that climate change is far reaching and that – while possibly effective in the short-term – adaptation will eventually be futile. However, in the interim a much larger frozen waterway that once subverted capitalist accumulation will be and is being deeply altered by the effects of climate change. As the Arctic ice recedes and melts new opportunities for accumulation are presenting. The Northwest passage once impassible due to ice will be accessible in the wake of its melt. Other extractive opportunities in these once impenetrable places will arise as well. Capitalism will cross new frontiers with nothing to freeze it out (Agier 2017). Will we have the courage to stop ourselves when the icy protective layers cease to reappear? Or will we continue to misjudge the risks and allow ourselves to fall through the cracks into the deadly waters below?

Frozen waterfall at the Carbide Wilson Ruins

References

Agier, M. (2012). Penser le sujet, observer la frontière. Le décentrement de

l'anthropologie, L'Homme, vol. 203 - 204, no. 3, pp. 51-75.

Boswell, R. (2024). Who was really the first person to champion the Rideau Canal Skateway? (n.d.). Ottawacitizen. Retrieved December 2025, from https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/boswell-who-was-really-the-first-person-to-champion-the-rideau-canal-skateway

Citton, Yves (2012). Pour une écologie des lignes et des tissages, en

collaboration avec Saskia Walentowitz, Revue des Livres, n° 4, mars 2012, p. 28-39.

Chakrabarty, D. (2017). The Politics of Climate Change Is More Than the Politics of Capitalism. Theory, Culture & Society, 34(2–3), 25–37. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276417690236

Knowles, N., Scott, D., & Steiger, R. (2024). Sustainability of snowmaking as climate change (mal)adaptation: An assessment of water, energy, and emissions in Canada’s ski industry. Current Issues in Tourism, 27(10), 1613–1630. https://doi.org/10.1080/13683500.2023.2214358

Nadegger, M., Rantala, O., & Varley, P. (2025). Skiing-with snow – exploring proximate ethnographies. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2025.2539289