Toronto councillors want more skating at rinks, Grenadier pond
Toronto's parks committee voted unanimously to try to keep rinks open longer next year and to look at allowing skating on Grenadier Pond.

TheStar.com
Feb. 25, 2015
David Rider

Skaters in Toronto will have a lot more ice options, if a city committee gets its way.
Members of the Parks and Environment committee voted unanimously Wednesday to create a reserve fund to routinely keep most outdoor rinks open into March, and to look at allowing skating on Grenadier Pond.

City staff will report on the reserve fund request in May to city council, which will have final say, and in the spring on options to lift a widely ignored ban on skating on natural ice on the High Park pond.

“We should be planning for cold, not scrambling in the cold,” said Councillor Paula Fletcher, who is not a committee member but attended to ask her colleagues to press staff to create a rink reserve fund.

“We’re not acting like ‘We the North’,” Fletcher said, using the popular Toronto Raptors catchphrase. “We’re acting like ‘We the Florida.’”

The issue of outdoor rink closings skated into the news late last week when the Star reported that, despite record cold temperatures and crowds at rinks, 35 of 52 outdoor rinks were to close for the season on Sunday.

Mayor John Tory then said he hoped companies would step forward with donations to keep some rinks open — essentially what happened last year in a similar cold snap under his predecessor Rob Ford.

Two companies are donating $100,000 each to keep an additional 12 rinks open until March 22, weather permitting, after one announced donor — waste collector Green For Life — had to withdraw due to a potential conflict of interest.

Last Friday, announcing the GFL donation Tory seemed to reject the idea of using taxpayer money for a fund to keep most or all rinks open into March if weather permits. But on Tuesday he said: “For next year’s budget, we’ll have a look at what we need to do in that regard, but for this year we’ve had the kindness and generosity of these two organizations.”

Fletcher said Tuesday: "This lurching from sponsor to sponsor ... for an item that most Torontonians feel should simply be delivered.”

City staff acknowledged the same committee last year asked them to consider a reserve fund to keep rinks open longer in cold weather, but said the idea of new spending did not survive a push for cost savings.

Councillor Sarah Doucette, whose ward includes High Park, successfully pushed for a review of the 14-year-old ban on skating on Grenadier Pond.

“What we're seeing now is hundreds of people skating, skiing, pushing strollers across the ice,” despite yellow signs on shore telling them to stay off, Doucette said. “How can we monitor this to allow people to skate?”

Parks director Richard Ubbens said the Toronto police marine unit originally monitored ice safety. The city then took over, flooding, smoothing and testing the ice and warning people with signs if conditions were unsafe.

He sounded resistant to Doucette’s call for staff to leave the ice natural and devise a flag warning system, like that used for beaches, with skaters venturing out at their own risk.

“In my view, I would think the program is either run well, and thoroughly, so we can declare it safe or unsafe, or it's not,” run at all, Ubbens said.

A city legal representative suggested scrapping the ban would open the city to increased liability, but acknowledged there is potential liability now because, despite the signs, city staff know people still skate.