Cutting the keys

Photo from the Ottawa Citizen

Driving me across the Minto Bridges at the end of last week, Carol said, "Look, they have cut the keys!"

In other words, the ice breaking, or flood control operations have begun on the Rideau River in Ottawa. It takes five men to manipulate the heavy circular saw with another standing by to supervise. Each year, the work begins under the Sussex Drive bridge, just above the Rideau Falls, with the cutting of these slits in the ice, and then follows the blasting (due to start a week today). Here's another detail I hadn't known until I read about it just now:

An ice control boom is installed in the late fall at Strathcona Rapids to slow the surface flow to promote an ice cover and limit the volume of frazil ice (slush), anchor ice and 'hanging dams' in the river. The ice control boom increases the efficiency of ice breaking and clearing operations in February and March.

The Strathcona Rapids are a couple of kilometres upstream from our part of the river, by Strathcona Park.