Great Skate #19 - Alexandra Park

Monday, February 18, 2013 was the Family Day holiday. It capped a busy weekend filled with errands, household improvements and visiting. In the afternoon, after all the family had gone home, I woke up from a nap and realized I had one weekend task still to do: skating.

The Bathurst streetcar goes right
past the rink.
Alexandra Park - at the top of the city's alphabetical list of rinks and easy to get to by transit - was where I ended up at about 4:30pm. It's not a particularly lovely rink, but it feels like part of the city fabric. The streetcar runs past it. You can see the CN Tower from it. Scadding Court Community Centre is next door. There's a Buddhist temple across the street, and the Toronto Western Hospital is a block away.

Shinny players filled one of the two rinks at the park. The other one was filled with about a dozen skaters, representing a wide range of pleasure skating categories:

  • two small boys who thought they were Gretzky(s)
  • one couple, the female half demonstrating the twirls she had learned as a teenaged figure skater, the male half trying to keep his balance while telling himself that skating hadn't gotten any easier since the last time he tried it, about 20 years ago
  • two parents, not on skates, coaxing their young child in brand new skates to make a slow, unsteady lap around the rink
  • a family (parents and children? uncle and mom and children? mom and boyfriend and children? it was hard to tell) enjoying themselves, skating together in easy laps
  • a dad, very skilled at skating, teaching his young son how to skate
  • me.


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