The old rail track became a main approach to the centre along the Rideau Canal.

ECONOMIST: Canada

The beating heart of the festival, now in its 33rd year, is Ottawa's Rideau Canal, a Unesco World Heritage site which cuts an elegant swathe through the city.

BBC: Embracing winter in Ottawa

The three Shafia sisters -- Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13 -- were found dead inside a car that plunged into the Rideau Canal in Kingston on June 30, 2009.

CNN: Family convicted in Canada 'honor murders'

In its 40 years of life, it has turned the Rideau Canal into the world's longest skating rink, planned urban bicycle paths and ski trails in Gatineau Park, and cleared LeBreton Flats, once a timber town and the camping place of lumberjacks and fur-trading voyageurs.

ECONOMIST: Canada