Kilt skating the Rockies

We've celebrated the last of the official kilt skates, but the joy of skating in the kilt lives on.

And when the Rocky Mountains beckon, why not don the kilt, pack the skates and the saltire, and head west out of Calgary.

The first stop was the town of Canmore, which recently celebrated its winter carnival.

Canmore has a beautiful pond near the centre of town that is maintained as a skating rink in the winter.

There's a little pavilion where you can change your skates, fasten the saltire to the hockey stick, and skate.

Everyone wanted a chance to skate with the saltire.

Here's how the world comes together: an Australian woman and a South African man fly the Scottish flag on a frozen pond in Canada.

About an hour up the road from Canmore, you reach Lake Louise, one of Canada's favourite tourism destinations. The snow had recently fallen.

But the ice was cleared and flooded for skating.

People come from all around the world to skate on Lake Louise in the winter. This father and son are from Bermuda.

This woman is from Mexico.

This picture was taken by a man from China.

This woman had come down from northern Alberta.

This couple is from Calgary.

And this man? Why, he and his family are visiting from Scotland. The last thing they expected was to skate on Lake Louise waving a Scottish saltire!

The 2018 Winter Olympic Games are being held in PyeongChang, South Korea. To help spur the Canadian team on, Canadian Tire has sent a crew across Canada to interview people and record their messages for our athletes. The initiative is called "We All Play for Canada!"

The Canadian Tire crew happened to be in Lake Louise that afternoon.

I had my turn to record my greeting. "We ALL play for Canada!"

I got to brandish the golden hockey stick...

And hang out with some very fun people.

Not only does Lake Louise offer the opportunity to skate in breath-taking mountain scenery, it has an equally famous hotel, the Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise.

The "We all play for Canada" crew took a break and so did I.

But someone had told me that there was a good skating rink on the golf course below the Fairmont Banff Springs hotel -- a 45-minute drive down the Trans-Canada Highway as I headed back to Calgary. I decided to check it out, arriving as the twilight settled and the snow fell. Even Bow Falls was frozen over.