While people in the Ottawa area were reluctant to admit it, the announcement on Friday was widely expected: For the first time since its creation 52 years ago, the Rideau Canal Skateway, which bills itself as the “world’s largest skating rink,” will not open this season.

The canal had already long passed its previous latest opening date of Feb. 2. And Winterlude, the winter festival held on the first three weekends of February, had already come and gone without its signature attraction. Then this week, BeaverTails, the maker of flattened pastries that have become synonymous with skating on the canal, gave up and removed all but one of its kiosks from the skateway.

As I wrote last year in an article about skating in and around Ottawa, the effects of climate change have long been a worry for the operators of the canal, which in a normal year welcomes 1.5 million skaters.

[Read: Ice Skating at a Rink is Fun. Gliding Through a Forest? Glorious.]

(Before anyone writes in, I acknowledge that residents of Ottawa, including me, are spoiled by enjoying a skateway created by the federal government, even if it is shared by visitors from across Canada and the world.)

While the canal historically has opened for 50 skating days a season, the shortest season until this year came in 2016, when people could take to the ice for only 18 days. Last season, skating ended on March 5 after 41 opening days.

The weather this season was particularly ill-suited for the canal. While there have been cold snaps, they have been repeatedly followed by prolonged warm spells that often brought rain.

I contacted Shawn Kenny, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Carleton University who is part of a group working with the National Capital Commission, the government agency in charge of the skateway, to find ways to extend or at least salvage the skating season.

He told me that while the gyrating temperatures were certainly a big factor in the canal frustration, there was also another major issue.

“The problem, I think, is that it is not necessarily good, clear ice,” he wrote in an email. The canal is now covered by a layer of what he called “snow ice that has probably 50 percent less bearing capacity” than pure ice.

Compounding the issue have been frequent snowfalls after the thaws. The resulting blanket of snow, he said, is remarkably good at insulating the canal and preventing the formation of ice strong enough to safely support thousands of skaters and the tractors, trucks and other pieces of heavy equipment used to clean, flood and maintain the ice.

After fitting sensors in the ice and using radar to profile it last season, the Carleton group experimented early this season with a slush gun, a watery variation of the artificial snow cannons used at ski resorts, to jump-start ice formation. But that technique couldn’t overcome the broad weather pattern.

The canal, of course, isn’t the only ice skating game in town. While out for a walk a couple of weeks ago, I came across a group of local drag performers and a Winterlude teddy bear mascot skating on an artificial ice pad next to the canal in Landsdowne Park. It appeared to be backup plan for “The Ice Parade, Canada’s first-ever Pride parade on ice,” originally scheduled to be held on the canal itself. The artificial rink in front of City Hall was also busier than usual.

But, as I wrote last year, Ottawa has another option for natural ice skating: ice trails running through forests, including Icelynd, a creation of Chris Neil, who played in the National Hockey League for 17 years.

I called Dave Mayer, who pioneered trail skating in the area with his Patinage en Forêt in Lac des Loups, Quebec, north of the capital.

He told me that his season opened on Dec. 15. With the exception of nine days over the key Christmas period and four other days, Mr. Mayer said that his trails have been in operation ever since. The trail operators have two advantages over the canal: The forest shades their ice on sunny, warm days. And their ice rests directly on the ground, not above still-flowing water, allowing it to be thinner yet still strong enough to support machinery.

But the thaws have added to Mr. Mayer’s workload, particularly when he and his crew have needed to quickly clear snow that’s come down after warm spells to prevent it from sticking to the ice.

While he was not gloating, Mr. Mayer did benefit from the canal’s misfortune. He said that many tourists brought their skates to his trail this season after arriving in Ottawa to find the gates to the canal closed.

“We were really happy that they didn’t come to Ottawa for nothing,” he said. “But the Rideau Canal, it’s really sad.”

Trans Canada

The Trans Canada section was compiled by Vjosa Isai, a reporter-researcher for The Times in Canada.

In light of the recent train derailment in Ohio, Ian Austen takes a look back at the tragedy in Lac-Mégantic, a Quebec town where 47 people died in 2013 during Canada’s worst rail disaster in nearly 150 years. In the last decade, little has changed to improve rail safety.

A 550-million-year-old fossil found in India turned out to be a less than dramatic discovery, another episode in the history of paleontological misfires. One such episode features Canadian geologists.

The Women’s World Cup kicks off on July 20 through Aug. 20, with matches in nine cities across Australia and New Zealand. The Canadian women’s team is a tournament favorite, along with the United States.

Title IX, a U.S. federal law that banned gender-based discrimination in educational settings and opened doors for millions of female athletes in the country, also made the United States an incubator for women’s national teams worldwide, writes Alan Blinder. This means more Olympians for Canada and Europe.

Canada is among a handful of countries where some employers are experimenting with the four-day workweek. New research suggests it comes with benefits, but not everyone is convinced.

How do Canada’s efforts to isolate Russia stack up against other countries in the West?

A native of Windsor, Ontario, Ian Austen was educated in Toronto, lives in Ottawa and has reported about Canada for The New York Times for the past 16 years. Follow him on Twitter at @ianrausten.

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