
(Click to enlarge)I took this picture last night at
Dufferin Grove. There's some blur, but it's good enough to show how crowded the hockey side was. If anything this picture makes the rink seem less packed than it was. When you're actually on the ice there's barely room to move. The pleasure-skating side was full too. People were going in and out of the skate rental room all evening long. Dufferin Grove is especially busy now because it's the only local rink open. Some of the men and boys now playing shinny at Dufferin will be going to
Campbell and
Wallace-Emerson when they open on Saturday December 5. It's too bad those rinks didn't open at the
same time as Dufferin, because the demand for hockey is definitely there.
Although Dufferin is more crowded than usual now, it will stay busy all winter because unlike most
outdoor rinks run by the City it offers good food and skate rentals for $2. The cheap rentals are good for people just learning to skate as well as for those who can't afford skates. Many of the people borrowing skates are new immigrants who have never been on the ice before. The rentals are also popular with people who have their own skates but didn't bring them because they stumbled on the rink while visiting the neighbourhood. You can read more about Dufferin Grove on the
park website as well as in this Toronto
Star article (Porter: The power of soup, skates and simplicity by Catherine Porter, Nov. 21).
Sometimes when I do research for
CELOS, City staff tell me hockey and pleasure skating are dying sports because of Toronto's changing demographics. When I tell them the rinks in my neighbourhood are busy, they seem surprised. There is some truth to the claim that immigration is changing the city's recreation patterns. Cricket, for example, is exploding in popularity. The growing interest in soccer is also partly due to immigration, but surely in a place as big as Toronto there's room for more than one sport. To say that hockey and skating are dying is nonsense. City employees need to see what is happening in this neighbourhood. Anybody who thinks Torontonians have lost interest in ice skating and hockey should come by Dufferin Grove on a winter evening.