By Pamela Eadie
Businesses hoping an enthusiastic Winterlude crowd would offset their losses from the canal’s late opening say, for the most part, reality fell short of their expectations.
This winter Ottawa’s historic skating rink set a new record, opening on Feb. 2, more than two weeks later than the previous record set in 1971.
Typically, the canal is open for skating for about 50 days each winter.
This winter the canal was open for only 34 days before it closed on March 12. Last year it was open for an exceptional 69 days.
Martine Bélanger, a spokeswoman for the National Capital Commission, which organizes Winterlude, said attendance numbers were not extraordinarily lower than previous years.
The canal was closed on the last weekend of Winterlude this year, but land-based events like Snowflake Kingdom still drew crowds.
Last year, the event attracted 650,000 visitors.
A formal count of visitors for this year has not been tallied, and no poll was done.
“We’re pretty pleased we were able to open the canal for at least the two weekends of Winterlude,” Bélanger said.
“What we’ve heard from our partners in the tourism industry is that as soon as we opened the canal during the first weekend, things were looking up for them in terms of maintaining their bookings.”
But Beavertails founder Grant Hooker said his business has suffered, and he had hoped Winterlude might bring tourists out of hibernation.
“That didn’t happen this year. As a little business, Beavertails’ finances are left without the injection we’d hoped for, and the tourism economy in general was not provided with the injection it had hoped for.”
A large portion of Beavertails’ business comes from selling their pastries to skaters on the canal.
Hooker said business was great on the second weekend of Winterlude, but just not enough to make up for the abbreviated skating season.
“Compared to other years, there almost is no comparison. It was a super short season. In terms of it being a good launch into 2002, economically, it wasn’t. But we will survive.”
Iona Sloan is co-owner of Mexicali Rosa’s restaurant, with three central locations that were affected by the warm weather conditions. She described the impact as “huge,” especially for the Dow’s Lake Pavillion location.
“We’re down about 50 per cent. Because of the first weekend of Winterlude, there was no skating down at this end. And it wasn’t as good as last year.”
Sloan said Winterlude did not meet her expectations as a boost to business.
“It wasn’t like other years, not at all. We were really hugely impacted by the weather here. The last weekend it was too warm.”
She’s thankful Winterlude still went ahead despite the warm weather.
Nonetheless, Sloan said employees were hurt by the loss of business, and many had their hours cut drastically.
Lee McDonell, manager of the Mayflower Restaurant and Pub on Elgin Street, said sales have been poor this winter and Winterlude did not make up for them.
“The second weekend actually was really good, but other than that . . . we can’t fight the weather. So sales have been down, yeah, for sure,” said McDonnell.
“Tourism is down. That’s what we feel is our major problem.”
The Mayflower said its sales were down about five per cent from last year.
Hotels also felt the impact.
Victor Ferreira, general manager of the Delta Hotel on Queen Street, said the hotel was affected by what he described as a “quiet Winterlude.”
“The canal, of course, plays an important role for Winterlude activities and I guess the publicity of the canal not being open until almost the very last minute may have had some impact,” said Ferreira.
He estimated Winterlude room bookings were down at least ten per cent compared to previous years.
But Don Blakslee, general manager of the Lord Elgin Hotel, said he was generally pleased by the business generated from Winterlude.
He had expected business would be slightly lower than last year.
Hooker concurs, “We were grateful for the skating that did occur, and we were grateful for the land-based Winterlude activities, which were spectacular.”