Warming up to the idea of more outdoor artificial skating rinks
As the curtain has once again drawn back on the first official (translation: “don’t put away the snow shovel just yet”) day of spring, we must take stock of the impending and deepening peril to our national pastime of skating on outdoor rinks.
The very existence of one of our most distinguishing Canadian symbols is being battered by the effects of global warming presently dubbed climate change and eventually to be re-termed something to the effect of “wishywashy, psycho weather.”
It has become an old story: One winter day you can lace up the skates and glide inside the park boards, the next day you can stock the rink with gold fish. Is that any way to run a muchneeded recreational facility?
As a kid in long-ago winters, I spent all of my free time on outdoor rinks. All you needed was a pair of skates (and sometimes a snow shovel.) I feel sorry for smartphone-glued kids today.
It is becoming ever more fruitless to slap up the municipal boards. Canadian climatologists don’t need their degrees (pardon the pun) in predicting the disappearance of our conventional outdoor hockey rinks in the next 50 years.
I say “conventional” because there is a solution to preventing this uber-Canadian identity from going the way of the dodo bird: Go back to the drawing board with respect to these facilities. I can already hear town planning, independently hired guns rubbing their hands together.
It is noteworthy that the city of Kirkland and the borough of Île-Bizard-Ste.-Geneviève have recently received provincial grants for upgrades to the refrigeration systems at their indoor arenas. But before you run off hooting and hollering with glee over the above-mentioned indoor work, much of it won’t be completed until the spring of 2020. And if this were even relevant, we would need many more indoor arenas versus upgrading the ones we have, anyway.
Meanwhile, increasing numbers of municipalities across Canada are investing in outdoor artificial ice rinks that remain open in warmer weather well into March. Now doesn’t that sound like a Godsend to all those kids who prefer the freedom and fresh air approach to family skating and pickup hockey games?
Perhaps, in order to invoke a bit of competitive and jealous indignation in Montreal’s West Islanders, I submit the following: Toronto has (so far) 52 outdoor compressor-cooled rinks, more than any city in the world. General hours of operation are 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., seven days a week.
We need to rethink and redesign the entire concept of outdoor winter rinks. And it doesn’t just stop at ice level. Remember, as a child, having to lace up in the cold because there was no neighbourhood clubhouse?
And I am not want to bring up Quebec’s most appalling lack of consideration when it comes to providing enough public washrooms. Not a good thing on a cold day on cookie cutters.
One by one, steadily year to year, West Island municipalities should be incorporating outdoor artificial ice rinks into the mix.
Each new facility should come with a properly heated and supervised clubhouse with conscientiously maintained washrooms. (Yeah, I know that costs money. That’s what tax money is for. That’s why I said, one by one, steadily.) Maybe we can get some donations from the very rich NHL to civilize our local rinks for the kids.
Why not have corporate sponsors kick in and name all of the new outdoor rinks after the donors?
I don’t mind a Coca-Cola sign next to a beautiful local rink.
Heaven knows these conglomerates can afford to help out their customers.
And while I grazed the topic of the elephant in the room — the scarcity of public washroom facilities — these outdoor ice cabins can serve the public in the off-seasons as well. Geez, it’s all I can do to not write a whole article on the shortage of West Island public water closets.