About the Great Skate Project

Each December, the month of January holds the promise of a clean start and an empty calendar.

When holiday preparations, busy social schedules and looming year-end work deadlines are making me tense, I can't wait for the new year to start. In January, I think, I'll be happy to have nothing pressing to do, no special plans to make.

Then, by about January 5th, I start to get stir crazy from boredom.

So on New Year's Day, 2012, I launched my Great Skate Project. My goal was to skate at a different outdoor rink every weekend between January and March.

Since then, I have skated at more than 40 rinks in Toronto and beyond, and I've written about each one on this blog. I can't always make it to a new rink each weekend, but I do try to skate somewhere. And I try to encourage as many friends and family members to join me as I can. Goofy hobbies are more fun when they are shared.

What I have learned from skating:

  1. The only thing a skating rink needs is frozen water. Everything else is a luxury. (Great Skate #9)
  2. Falling down is part of learning. (Great Skate #2)
  3. If you go with the flow, you're probably going counter-clockwise. (Great Skate #7)
  4. Skating makes good memories. (Great Skate #30)
  5. Any chance to skate is a Great Skate.

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Popular Great Skates

Great Skate #21 - Greenwood Park (renovated)

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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 ...
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Great Skate #7 - Ryerson Community Park

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Cathy joined me for a peaceful afternoon skate at Ryerson Community Park on February 4th. This is the little rink tucked into the Ryerson University campus. There weren't many skaters out and everyone else was a university student. Two guys were practising their hockey skills, using turned-over benches as goals. A girl practised her figure skating spins while flirting with a guy who looked like he was torn between flirting back and joining the hockey players. The Ryerson rink is round, and because there were so few skaters on the ice, it was a good opportunity to explore something I've noticed during Great Skate 2012:  people always skate in a counterclockwise direction . I tested this, deliberately skating clockwise. With just Cathy and I doing laps, we weren't getting in anyone's way, and there wasn't any peer pressure to overcome. At first, no problems, although it felt a bit odd. Then after a few minutes I realized that we had somehow turned ourselves a...
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Great Skate #34: Love Crescent Parkette

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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 ...
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Great Skate #33: Gage Park, Brampton

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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...
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Great Skate #40: Bryant Park, New York City

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The rink at Bryant Park doesn't have the same "I saw it in the movies" cachet as the rinks at Central Park and Rockefeller Center , but it is pretty spectacular. The rink is the centrepiece of Bryant Park's Bank of America Winter Village . Chalk up a point in favour of corporate sponsorships: admission to this rink is free. (I did pay for a lock to secure my locker though.) The amenities include a spacious changeroom, a snack bar and skate rentals. Also, a platoon of penguins and snowmen that unsteady skaters can use to keep their balance. There were lots of good things about this Great Skate, but here's what I got excited about: the skating direction was clockwise. Skating clockwise is a very rare thing on public ice rinks. I asked one of the staff members if they always skated clockwise. He said that the skating direction was counter-clockwise in the mornings, and clockwise in the afternoons. So sensible. On a Friday afternoon, the rink was busy but...
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