The Great Skate Project

Skating rinks have been in the news lately! Skating on 10 rinks in one day Globe and Mail reporter Marcus Gee recently took a break from covering the antics of Toronto City Hall to explore the city's rinks. In one day he skated on 10 rinks from one end of the city to the other. (The Great Skate Project has been to six of them - and this reminds me that I need to skate in the west end.) Fun fact I learned from the article: it costs the city about $6 million a year to operate its rinks. Read Marcus Gee's article about his city skating adventure here. Watch this short video featuring his top 5 rinks Toronto's outdoor rinks bring communities together For some reason, an article about skating rinks in the "teeming metropolis of Toronto" ran recently in the Regina Leader-Post.   Read the article here Toronto's Barbara Ann Scott rink is no more I was sad to learn that site of the very first Great Skate is no longer open. Read the National Post articl...

On Saturday, January 18 I went skating on a rink on the edge of Lake Ontario: Sherbourne Commons . The rink is located at the foot of Sherbourne, next to the new George Brown College and Corus Entertainment buildings. The Redpath Sugar Factory is nearby. Also Sugar Beach - which is a lot more appealing in July. It's all part of the Waterfront Toronto redevelopment project, revitalizing industrial lands into something more enjoyable. It's a great idea, although the area still feels more remote than it actually is. Looking out on a harbour like this makes me think of Thunder Bay (never been there, maybe it's not like this at all), not Toronto: Now I have the Edmund Fitzgerald song in my head again. When I got to the rink in the middle of the morning, there were just two other skaters. The ice was in perfect condition. I did clockwise laps until more skaters showed up. There were probably close to 20 of us by the time I left. It's a lovely rink - no ger...

The weather on Sunday, January 5 was mild and snowy - a perfect day for skating. My friends and nieces joined me at the Greenwood Park rink. Those of you keeping track might notice that Greenwood has already had its Great Skate, but it's had such a dramatic makeover since then that I'm counting it as a new rink. Two years ago, at Great Skate #8 , the Greenwood Park rink looked like this: Greenwood Park rink on February 11, 2012 It was a typical Toronto rink. Not beautiful, but it did the job. Last winter, the rink was closed for renovations. It reopened in November , looking like the winner of a skating rink beauty contest: Greenwood Park rink in November 2013 It used to be a single ice rink surrounded by a chain link fence, where you might feel a bit like a gerbil in a cage (if gerbils could skate). Now Greenwood Park has two rinks. One, used for shinny and skating lessons, is covered by a snazzy roof (which probably has some practical, keep-the-ice-icy ...