The Great Skate Project

On Saturday, March 7, I enjoyed a solitary skate at a natural ice rink in Love Crescent parkette .* That was probably my last Great Skate of the season. Since then, the weather has shifted from wintery to spring-like. The sun is warm, the air is soft and you can hear water dripping everywhere. There may be a few die-hard skaters and shinny players out there, but I think most of us are ready to switch to cycling, ball hockey and other warm-weather activities. The Love Crescent rink was first built in 2013 by a group of community-minded skating enthusiasts. The street is tucked away in a neighbourhood just north of Kingston Road in east Toronto. It's not a place you pass through on your way somewhere else; you have to know where you're going to find it. The rink builders were clever. They designed the rink in the shape of an oblong donut. In the centre is a space for shinny players. Around the centre, separated by a wide snowbank, is a track for pleasure skating. There are ...

On Sunday, March 1, the Great Skate Project revisited one of the rinks of my youth: the skating trail in Brampton's Gage Park . My friends Jennifer and Riubert joined me, with their two small boys. Gage Park is located in downtown Brampton - the quaint, slightly shabby part of Brampton that has been eclipsed by the mushrooming housing developments all around it. In the late 1980s, Brampton rebuilt its City Hall, and that project included the installation of a skating trail in the neighbouring Gage Park. I think it was the smartest thing that Brampton councillors have ever done. It's been years since the last time I skated at Gage Park. This was the first time my friends had been there, so I was glad my memory of it lived up to reality. I don't know how long the skating trail is, but it does a big loop around the perimeter of the park. There is a skate sharpening booth ($5 per pair), a snack truck and public washrooms. Parking (free on Sundays) is across the s...

On Friday, February 27, 2015, my friend Cathy braved the cold to join me at the Shops at Don Mills for Great Skate #32. The skating rink is a small oval in the centre of an open-air shopping plaza. It's surrounded by high-end stores and restaurants, making skating there quite a different experience from my recent adventure at Arrowhead Provincial Park . We were the only skaters there when we arrived. Soon we were joined by three others. If the mall is counting on the rink to attract more potential customers, they might need to rethink that strategy. Or maybe it was just too cold or too early in the evening for many people to be out. Skating with a friend is a terrific way to catch up with each other's lives. It's a bit like having a conversation in a car - the sense of forward movement keeps the ideas and questions flowing. Of course, sitting in a cosy cafe and enjoying a hot cup of tea also fosters good conversation. That's the nice thing about skat...

This weekend, 34 of the City of Toronto's 51 outdoor artificial ice rinks were scheduled to close for the season. For many people, this didn't make any sense: we've been beset by an epically cold winter, so why shut down skating rinks just when Torontonians are getting the hang of dressing for the weather and amusing ourselves outdoors? The answer, as usual, is money. It costs about $4,500 a week to operate each rink, according to the Globe and Mail . The city budget doesn't cover the cost of operating all 51 ice rinks for another month. It didn't in previous years either. Last year, corporate sponsors stepped up to bankroll some of the rinks scheduled to close, and that happened this year as well. So now 29 rinks will stay open until March 22. I'm glad more rinks are staying open. But I'm finding it hard to scrape up any outrage over the fact that some rinks are being closed. Community-Run Rinks in Toronto Here's why: even with the rink closures,...

The skating trail at Arrowhead Provincial Park  opened in 2012, but I first started hearing about it last year. I put it on my wish list, but wasn't sure if schedules, weather and transportation logistics would ever align for me to skate there. On Saturday, February 14, everything aligned. Watch my video of what it's like to skate on the Arrowhead skating trail: Arrowhead is just north of Huntsville, Ontario. It's many hours north of my neighbourhood in Toronto, but not so far from where my parents live in Orillia. I was visiting Mum and Dad this weekend, and they were somewhat surprisingly game to go on this adventure with me. The weather on Saturday had warmed up to -12 Celsius. The sun was shining and the roads were clear. So, dressed in many layers, we set off. Everything went smoothly until we got to the park entrance. It's about a kilometre from the highway turnoff to the park gate, and a long line of cars was snaked along the entire distance. We persever...

On Sunday, February 7, I finally got around to skating at Dufferin Grove Park , a rink that has been on my "must skate" list since the Great Skate Project began. My sister and my nieces joined me, and also my brother, who was testing his skating legs for the first time in more than 20 years. Two generations of siblings, all on skates. Dufferin Grove is a park in Toronto's west end known for its strong community involvement. The skating facilities reflect this. The rink itself is a typical double-pad rink surrounded by a chain-link fence, but its "clubhouse" has real personality. The usual lockers-and-benches decor is augmented with mismatched chairs and tables, shelves of board games, and a wood stove. You can buy hot chocolate, hot dogs and other treats at the snack bar. A huge map of the neighbourhood is painted on one wall, while other walls are decorated with archival photos of the rink and posters of local events. There is also a skate rental booth ...

My friend Csilla, who goes skating with her family nearly every weekend, invited me to join them at their local rink, North Toronto Memorial Community Centre . I did on Saturday, January 24 - almost exactly two years since  the last time I went skating with them . It was cold and overcast, but still great skating weather. The rinks at North Toronto Memorial Community Centre. The rink is not beautiful, but the ice was in excellent condition. The double-pad facility means that there is always a rink available for pleasure skaters while shinny sessions and skating lessons run next door. When I arrived, a city-run skating lesson for parents and very small children was just getting underway. Csilla's young son was also taking skating lessons, private ones organized with a friend. Their teacher set up an obstacle course of toys at one end of the rink for the boys to skate around. She also inflated a balloon and had them chase it while she darted it back and forth just beyond thei...

Here's what can happen if you have a Great Skate Project. You can come across Tara, who runs a "Meet Up" group for people in Toronto who like skating. She organizes a skating night at Christie Pits Park , which is on your list of ice rinks you haven't visited yet. So you go, not quite sure what you're getting yourself into. The skating event takes place on a clear, cold Friday night. There are about a dozen skaters on the rink. Only a few are there for Tara's meet-up. You meet Wayan, who moved to Canada from Indonesia. This is only his fourth time on skates. He doesn't give up when he falls and soon he's more confident on the ice. He says his friends in Indonesia were puzzled when he showed them photos of people ice skating. "Why are they wearing knives on their feet?" they asked. You meet Camille and Waleed, who are from New York. Waleed hasn't skated in 20 years. Camille seems to be more skilled at it. The rink isn't crow...

I launched my Great Skate Project in 2012, aiming to skate on a different outdoor rink each weekend throughout the winter. Now, as the project enters its fourth winter, I have to travel farther afield to find new rinks to add to my list. ( Here's the list so far. ) On January 3, I visited some friends north of the city to check out the Riverwalk Commons rink in Newmarket. Although the weather was approaching blizzard status, Susan and Ian were surprisingly enthusiastic. (Their kids, perhaps wiser than us, stayed home.) Located in downtown next to the community centre, the Newmarket skating rink (officially named the Tim Hortons Skating and Water Feature) is pretty spiffy. There aren't indoor changerooms, but there is an "ice lounge" at one end, with fancy seating and a big-screen TV showing a video of a roaring fireplace. It's sort of the polar (ha ha) opposite of the log benches and campfires you find at the Harbourfront skating rink. We skated until th...