The Ice Canoe races are back! What? You’ve never heard of ice canoeing? It is the quintessential Canadian winter sport (well, right after hockey). Essentially, five hardy athletes take a canoe onto the frozen river, pushing it over the frozen patches and paddling on the liquid ones.
When a friend posted that description for an event at the ice canoe races for MEETin Montreal, I was sold. Montreal gets a lot of winter, particularly this year. May as well go out and embrace it. Ice canoeing is uniquely a Quebec thing (though Toronto and Windsor have gotten in on the action), so it was an opportunity to find out what makes 35 teams paddle their hearts out on a half frozen river in the middle of February.
Watching, photographing and cheering on ice canoeists turned out to be an entertaining way to spend a winter afternoon outside. The teams did 3-4 laps around the over four kilometre course, which included paddling across the fierce St. Mary current of the St. Lawrence River to a touch point on Ile-St-Helen. In under 90 minutes, the first of the Elite Women’s teams crossed the finish line, shortly followed by the Elite Men’s and Sports teams. Watching the whole thing was surprisingly captivating!
Red Boots Adventuress 