This winter Felix Horne and his son won’t be lacing up their skates at the Mutchmor rink.
Located in the heart of The Glebe, the only boarded rink in The Glebe has welcomed hockey and ringette players since 1932.
This winter though, Mutchmor Public School declined to host the rink. With more students now attending nearby Corpus Christi Elementary School, the school has decided to use its lawn for other things.
“Community rinks are the … centrepoint of the community, and not having that here is a big blow for a lot of people,” Horne told Capital Current.
But there is an alternative for skaters in The Glebe this winter. His eight year old-son and friends, “all hockey people,” will instead hit the ice at Sylvia Holden Park.
The replacement rink rests on the park’s main lawn between the Queen Elizabeth Driveway and O’Connor Street, near Lansdowne Park. Construction has already begun on a test of the rink’s popularity and use to determine whether the site can serve as a permanent home for a boarded rink.
In years past, the Mutchmor rink was sometimes shut down without any alternative site available, or was shifted across the street to the St-James Tennis Club. Capital Ward Coun. Shawn Menard says that this season, the community wanted another location.
A survey by the city showed “there was a clear desire to have a local rink with boards in the neighbourhood,“ Menard wrote in an email. “The rink is a huge community building project both for organized games like ringette, and impromptu pickup hockey matches.”
Horne skates mostly on the Rideau Canal in the winter, but his son’s growing desire to play hockey has prioritized his search for a safe space where he can learn. “We’re getting to that point where having somewhere to play that’s safe, that’s central, that’s free, will be important,” Horne said.
The new rink is 100 metres from his house, but he’s worried for those residents further away.
“You want your facilities to be centrally located so people can walk,” he said. “Sylvia Holden is a bit out of the way for a lot of people in this neighbourhood. … It’s not the best location.”
The Glebe Community Association, which wants the rink at Mutchmor, echoed Horne’s feelings, saying the relocation will affect an important school population.
“I think [it] is a real lost opportunity for an elementary school population,” Angus McCabe, chair of the GCA parks committee, wrote Capital Current. “How wonderful to teach physical, outdoor education to young students with a boarded outdoor rink in your own school backyard.”
City staff reviewed many locations for the rink this season and deemed Sylvia Holden Park one of the only suitable parks available in the Glebe. According to the project’s description, six other spaces were found to be incompatible.
Sylvia Holden Park has green space between its two existing baseball diamonds but it was also deemed unsuitable, despite already having lights and maintenance access. McCabe said the city didn’t want to risk damaging the grass in between the baseball fields, which forced the rink onto the park’s main lawn.
McCabe and the GCA said they had hoped to use the baseball diamonds for outdoor skating.
“We ideally want to maintain Sylvia Holden Park’s main lawn — a significant, existing park asset — as a four-season green and winter space already used as such by current park users,” he wrote. “With the new pilot-project rink location, this will no longer be the case.”
McCabe said residents expressed concerns about proposed light fixtures, especially those whose homes will face the rink from O’Connor Street.
The pilot project includes permanent rink water service installation, with temporary repurposing of Mutchmor’s rink boards, a seasonal trailer and six rink lights.
If the rink at Sylvia Holden Park proves popular, three permanent and taller light fixtures will be placed solely on the O’Connor side of the rink, avoiding light spillover for homeowners. Insulation and heating changes would be made in the park’s pavilion for skaters to warm up and change their skates.
While testing the lighting is important for McCabe, seeing the community’s reaction is even more important.
“The most important thing I think is whether the folks in the surrounding area as a whole are excited about it and that means that a committed group of volunteers steps up for the long term to maintain the rink,” McCabe wrote. “It’s hard but meaningful work if it gives a whole new group of kids in the neighbourhood the opportunity to play outdoor hockey — and the childhood and parent memories that come with it.”
Like every other Glebe skater, Horne is now waiting for consistently cold weather before lacing up his skates. This winter, he will split his ice time between the Rideau Canal and Sylvia Holden Park, teaching his son the sport he grew up loving.
