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Rink diaries
To see all the diaries for an individual rink, go to the individual rink's folder, through the rinks details pages.
outdoor rink rats, 2008
Why We Love Outdoor Rinks, is a collection of some of our favourite stories from the diaries. A great read!
Introduction
As far as we know, the city of Toronto has more outdoor compressor-cooled skating rinks than any city in the world. There are 49 of them and then there's Harbourfront. For four years, rink friends have been dropping in at various rinks and writing about them.
Some are "working rinks," with ambitious neighbourhood-wide hockey programs, and some are mostly for playing around, pick-up shinny hockey or twirling around on figure skates. Twelve are double-pad rinks, so that shinny hockey players and pleasure-skaters don't have to take turns on the ice. The rest are single pads, mostly staffed, with varying degrees of supervision, but some unstaffed except for ice maintenance visits. The unstaffed rinks also vary -- some are much-loved in their neighbourhoods, while others are getting too close to being orphans -- needlessly, we think.
Toronto's civic winter treasure needs good care, which - in many rinks - could use improving. The first step is to describe what's happening. So we keep blogs on as many rinks as possible. We call these rink accounts "diaries," and we enthusiastically welcome entries by other rink users (and rink staff): write to us at [email protected]. From time to time we use material from the blogs to make a report to the City's rink management (see the Zanetti reports, and the updates for the rink users who sign up for want to the periodic rink bulletins. To sign up for the rink bulletins: Click here
Weather: high of 8, no rain although it was in the forcast. The sun came out for about two hours in the early afternoon.
Ice maintenance: 8;30 s/f, 11:45 s/f, 4pm water pumped off with zamboni, , 5:45 water pumped off with zamboni, 9pm s/f.
This was the second day of the "Women of Winter" shinny hockey tournament. In the afternoon the games were played in a lake, because it was warm and the sun was shining. When the zamboni operator came at 4 and took off the water, everyone cheered him. The final game was played on good ice.