Skaters were ready to hang up their blades for the season on Feb. 15, when the City of Ottawa announced that it would be closing all outdoor ice rinks due to the warm weather.
But Ottawa’s “yo-yo” weather this year – cold today, warm tomorrow – may extend this year’s brief outdoor skating season by a few more weeks.
While Ottawa’s avid skaters eagerly welcomed the reopening of the city’s outdoor rinks, there are many who say the city still has a long way to go in terms of improving the outdoor skating season.
“This year was definitely more challenging for the community operators running the rinks,” says Dan Chernier, the City of Ottawa’s general manager of Parks, Recreation and Cultural Services. “We had a late start, some very warm periods, and even freezing rain. It hasn’t been easy.”
Ottawa has 246 outdoor skating rinks scattered across the city, with Centretown being home to three of them. All of the rinks are run by volunteers who dedicate dozens of hours per week to maintaining the quality of the ice surfaces – no easy task, especially this season.
“I spend around 30 hours here a week,” says Sean Simpson, the volunteer supervisor of four years at the Jack Purcell skating rink, located by the Jack Purcell Community Centre off Elgin and Frank Streets. “Flooding the ice alone takes about an hour and a half. It’s a lot of work.”
The City of Ottawa provides funding to rink supervisors to help with the various costs associated with maintaining the outdoor rinks, including snow removal. While the funding does help, Simpson says it often isn’t enough.
“When we get a heavy snowfall, I can’t use a shovel or use a snow-blower without damaging the rink,” says Simpson. He often has to rent larger snow removal machines, which means the city funding he receives each year quickly disappears.
“After two or three heavy snowfalls, the money starts coming out of my own pocket,” says Simpson.
Centretown resident and regular skater Adrian Murray believes more funding could help not only improve the maintenance of the ice surfaces, but the overall quality of the outdoor rinks. His favourite rink to frequent is the Plouffe Park rink, located off Preston Street in Little Italy, largely because of the shelter located alongside it.
“When you’re on the ice for a couple hours, it’s nice having a place to warm up in,” says Murray. “Warm shelters at more rinks would be a huge improvement.”
Chenier says short of controlling the weather, there isn’t much else the City can do to improve the rinks. But if the winters continue to be mild, he says the City may have to consider building more refrigerated outdoor rinks. There are currently two refrigerated rinks in the city – the Ben Franklin Park Rink and the recently completed Rink of Dreams. A third rink has already been proposed at Lansdowne Park.
But regardless of the weather struggles, Chenier says outdoor rinks remain one of the City’s best winter features.
“The outdoor rinks become a community hubs,” he says. “They really bring life the parks during the cold winter months.”