Location

100 Queen Street West at Bay St., on the south side of Nathan Phillips Square. See Satellite Map

Links

Skate rental office number unavailable Skate rental

Schedule

See Schedule tab

City Councillor

The City Councillor for this rink is Councillor Wong-Tam

City Hall/Nathan Phillips Square Rink Profile

Rink change area: There is a brand new change area, with a new snack bar too, just starting up.

Staff: One to three rink guards at a time, plus a zamboni operator always on site.

Maintenance: The rink has its own Zamboni, own operator on two shifts. Very well maintained. However, during large events in the Square, the ice isn't cleaned because it's too hard to get the large crowd of skaters off the ice. 14 shifts a week.

Free shinny-hockey and pleasure-skating hours:

Free pleasure-skating: From first light until 10 pm, seven days a week. This rink is generally quite crowded. Sometimes you can see excellent skaters there.

Free shinny hockey: Officially: No shinny, only pleasure skating. But it's known all over the city that after the rink guards leave at night (usually 10 pm), shinny hockey often breaks out on the rink -- a very good game, lit by the hotel windows across the street. The game doesn't usually go later than 1.30 am because by then too many lights are out at the Sheraton Hotel and skaters can't see the puck.

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Comments about this rink: e-mail us at rinkissues@cityrinks.ca.

Opening and closing dates:

Opens: Dec 1, 2012
Scheduled closing: March 15, 2013

Rink Diary 2012 - 2013

Feb.1, 2013 from skater Linda Sims

I am going to be skating at Nathan Phillips Square, and wondered whether there are lockers we can rent to hold our purses/phones/other valuables?

Feb.2, from cityrinks to Linda

Hello - there are lockers, it seems. See here: http://www.cityrinks.ca/wiki/wiki.php?n=CityHallRink.FrontPage#Diaries If you get a chance to let us know if they are accessible and what your experience was like - please do.

Feb.2, from Linda to cityrinks

Thanks for this information. I went skating and it was terrific – good skates, plenty of lockers, and lots of fun!

March 8, 2013, from skater Fiona McAlister:

Your website says that the nathan phillips square rink closes for the season on March 10 but according to the city of Toronto it closes on the 15th. Normally that difference of 5 days wouldn't matter but it happens to cover March break so visitors to the city might want to know that the rink is actually opened. Your site is the one that comes up first when I google Nathan Phillips Square skating so I imagine that is true for other tourists too.

Response from cityrinks:

Thanks for pointing that out. Cityrinks.ca actually has individual pages for 56 compressor-cooled rinks plus 18 natural ice rinks. On the home page we wrote March 15, but I'll change the sub-page too.

If you look at the home page you'll see that we're the unofficial website, i.e. we're not a municipal site, we're outdoor-rink enthusiasts who want the rinks to work well. Outdoor rinks don't work at all well in March, the sun is too high already and has too much power: http://cityrinks.ca/wiki/wiki.php?n=HowToFixIt.OutdoorRinksAndWeather. Compressors are strong but the March sun is stronger :-)

Note today's "latest news" on our home page -- if the sun keeps shining during most of the day, the rinks will start to be mush by 1 pm, and will be mostly unskateable by 3. Some ice surfaces may come back for an hour or two by this evening, if they're not too rutted from people trying to skate on them.

So out-of-town visitors might want to leave their skates behind, no matter what the city's rink schedule says...

Read More >>

Views of the rink

From The City of Toronto Website 2012-13

For the skating schedule, go to City Hall Rink page on the City website, then click on Skating.

For up to date listings of open rinks (not the same as scheduled openings), see Current Conditions on the cityrinks.ca Home Page

If you notice a different schedule at your rink, please let us know mail@cityrinks.ca
See also the City of Toronto Outdoor Rinks web pages.

Notes

City Hall Rink

• This rink is always opened first and closed last. Because it's in the shadow from a big hotel to the south, its ice is better than rinks that are in direct sunlight.
• Parking underground in city hall lot (pricey but handy).
• 5 minutes from two subway lines and 2 minutes from the Queen Streetcar.
• Skate Rental: 416 304-1400. This is also the most reliable number to find out how the ice is.

Rink Diary 2012 - 2013

Feb.1, 2013 from skater Linda Sims

I am going to be skating at Nathan Phillips Square, and wondered whether there are lockers we can rent to hold our purses/phones/other valuables?

Feb.2, from cityrinks to Linda

Hello - there are lockers, it seems. See here: http://www.cityrinks.ca/wiki/wiki.php?n=CityHallRink.FrontPage#Diaries If you get a chance to let us know if they are accessible and what your experience was like - please do.

Feb.2, from Linda to cityrinks

Thanks for this information. I went skating and it was terrific – good skates, plenty of lockers, and lots of fun!

March 8, 2013, from skater Fiona McAlister:

Your website says that the nathan phillips square rink closes for the season on March 10 but according to the city of Toronto it closes on the 15th. Normally that difference of 5 days wouldn't matter but it happens to cover March break so visitors to the city might want to know that the rink is actually opened. Your site is the one that comes up first when I google Nathan Phillips Square skating so I imagine that is true for other tourists too.

Response from cityrinks:

Thanks for pointing that out. Cityrinks.ca actually has individual pages for 56 compressor-cooled rinks plus 18 natural ice rinks. On the home page we wrote March 15, but I'll change the sub-page too.

If you look at the home page you'll see that we're the unofficial website, i.e. we're not a municipal site, we're outdoor-rink enthusiasts who want the rinks to work well. Outdoor rinks don't work at all well in March, the sun is too high already and has too much power: http://cityrinks.ca/wiki/wiki.php?n=HowToFixIt.OutdoorRinksAndWeather. Compressors are strong but the March sun is stronger :-)

Note today's "latest news" on our home page -- if the sun keeps shining during most of the day, the rinks will start to be mush by 1 pm, and will be mostly unskateable by 3. Some ice surfaces may come back for an hour or two by this evening, if they're not too rutted from people trying to skate on them.

So out-of-town visitors might want to leave their skates behind, no matter what the city's rink schedule says...

Read More >>

Rink Diary 2011 - 2012

Friday Dec.2 2011

From rink user Eric HM: 9:30pm. There were maybe 80 people on the rink, most pleasure skating around the perimeter of the rink, with a lively game of 16-20 shinny players in the center area and a number of people sitting along the edges of the rink. It was very crowded, but the ice was in decent shape. Felt like a really relaxed atmosphere even with the shinny in the center.

Sunday December 18 2011

The rink is full of people, as usual. One very strange thing -- there is a sound system, which often broadcasts a radio station that has a lot of commercials. So those commercials take up half of the sound space of the rink. Do they pay the city to play this stuff? It's pretty bush league.

City Hall rink light show

sign says "stand back during rink maintenance"

skate rental and staff room, 3 staff inside

snacks: standard fare, no crush of customers

December 22 2011

The rink at Nathan Phillips Square is tremendously popular. Some photos from rink visitor Rafael Lewis:

City Hall rink at 1 pm

City Hall rink at 6 pm

January 7 2012

a very popular spot for skaters -- how can they even move?

Feb.24 2012

deserted at lunchtime: too rainy

From rink reporter Raf Lewis: Don't think I've ever seen the rink deserted at lunchtime, so I took a couple of pictures. I guess it didn't help that it was raining and the ice had multiple pools of water around.

Read More >>

Diary 2010 - 2011, Rink Diary 2009 - 2010 Diary 2008-2009, Diary 2007-2008, Diary 2006 - 2007, Diary 2005 - 2006, Diary 2004 - 2005

Rink Capital Costs

Total cost of City Hall Rink reno was increased by $750,000.00 net of all applicable taxes ($763,200.00 net of HST recoveries), revising the current contract value from $1,935,019.00 to $2,685,019.00 net of all applicable taxes.

See here for Contract award details.

CELOS Estimate of Rink Operating Costs (2009)

posted January 07, 2009

We have gone to several disparate sources to arrive at an estimate of annual (seasonal) operating costs of Toronto's 49 outdoor rinks ("AIR's" - Artificial Ice Rinks).

Our best estimate of direct costs from these approaches is

• maintenance staff $1.3M
• rink guards $0.5M
• energy $1.4M

Total direct cost estimate $3.2M (average about $65,000 per rink - 12 week season)

Read More >>