Danaka Wheeler, Centretown News
Global warming may seriously shorten skating times on outdoor rinks such as the one at McNabb Park.After experiencing a green Christmas this past December, the frosty temperatures that traditionally accompany Canadian winters have now arrived.
Despite the inconvenience of layering up, the cold weather allows Centretown residents such as Drew Veenstra to get outdoors and take advantage of a revered Canadian tradition: playing hockey on outdoor rinks.
Veenstra, a student at Ottawa U, says that despite the late start, he’s happy to be getting into the routine of playing on the McNabb Park rink three to four times per week.
“I love it when I’m here because it’s so much fun to come out here and skate,” he says. “Last year, the canal was open for like 58 days consecutive which was so much fun. I was on it almost every night. I loved that. I love the cold, so it’s definitely nice to have a long skating season.”
However, according to a 2012 study by researchers Damon Matthews, Lawrence Mysak and Nikolay Damyanov on the effects of global warming, that treasured tradition may now be in jeopardy.
“It won’t be long before there won’t be skating across southern Canada,” Matthews says, suggesting that as the skating season shortens, fewer people will see the value in constructing outdoor rinks for short periods of time.
According to the study, observed decreases in the Canadian outdoor skating season due to recent winter warming, average winter temperatures in Canada have increased more than 2.5 C since 1950—three times the global rate attributed to global warming.
The study surveyed 142 metrological stations across the country and came to the conclusion that in the next 15 to 20 years outdoor skating may become a thing of the past in Canada. The findings have serious implications for the more than 250 rinks in the Ottawa region, three of which are located in Centretown.
Volunteer rink operator Ewan Reid is now on his sixth year operating the rink at McNabb Park. He’s built numerous rinks of his own at his parents’ farm property in the past. He says the possibility of losing outdoor skating to global warming would be tragic.
“I think for some people it’s their only opportunity to be outside for the winter because the rest of the time they have no reason to go outside and brave the cold,” Reid says. “I know many people who were raised on backyard rinks and it kind of shaped their hockey careers as well as part of their life of what they do to stay active during the winter.”
Climate scientist Robert McLeman and his colleagues at Wilfrid Laurier University created RinkWatch as a way for rink builders across North America to document skating conditions on their rinks over the course of the winter in 2012.
McLeman inputs the data from his site into a climate prediction model, which predicts that the short skating season Ottawa is currently experiencing may become typical towards the back half of the century.
As the skating seasons in Canada continue to get shorter, he says many Canadians are going to be pressed with the difficult question, “Is it even worth building a rink?’”
Matthews says questions like this can become particularly troubling for a country such as Canada that identifies with outdoor skating and hockey.
Although only a possibility in the distant future, Reid says it would be hard to envision a future where he can only tell his grandchildren about people like Veenstra who skated on the ice Reid made on a nearly daily basis.
“It’s part of our identity, that element of Canadiana, and I think it’s important to who we are,” Reid says. “It would be a real shame if we don’t have this in the future.”