These images show the actual hockey rink that I was able to see during my time in Toronto. It’s a nice view of the city, but probably not the only one you’ll see in the city.
The Hockey Rink is the largest ice surface in Toronto, and the city’s first one, built in 1881, is a giant rink that was used until the early 1990s. A city committee decided that the rink was too dangerous for a city of the time, and it was removed in 1990. There are many other rinks in Toronto, including the one in Mississauga (which just opened in 2007) and there are many other great city views here.
One thing I noticed when I took this photo was the fact that the rink is surrounded by water. That has always been a problem when I lived in Toronto, but I’m sure it was a problem in the 1950s too. In the mid-1950s, when the city was still growing, the city decided that it had to build a bigger rink so that the population would not be pushed out of the city.
In the late ’50s and early ’60s, the city built a new rink, the Eglinton Rink, and after it was completed in 1958 became the largest city ice rink in North America. But it was also the first new rink the city had to build entirely by itself. In 1960 the city decided that they had to find a better way to build the rink, so they decided to build it on top of a hill.
We’re told that this was the first time in North America that a city used a “skate park” to build an ice rink in a city (other than the one on top of the World Trade Center site). The Eglinton Rink became a model for countless other community facilities, such as the new St. Louis, Missouri hockey rink.
It seems the city of Toronto got the idea for the rink from the one in Calgary, Alberta.
In the past, the city of Toronto had actually built a skate park on top of an existing hill, but that park became too popular and it was removed by the city. In order to create a great skate park, the city of Toronto had to build one that was more accessible to the public.
The new rink in Eglinton, Ontario, is built on a huge hill and is designed to be a more accessible destination for the public. It also features a beautiful, well-designed, and well-maintained skate park.
The Eglinton City Council had been working on a skate park for several years, and it was finally accepted in 2011. They built the hill in the hopes that it would become the “first of its kind in the world.” I guess they were right. Even though the skate park is more accessible than Toronto’s old one, it’s still pretty far from the city’s downtown core.
That said, at least the Eglinton skate park has plenty of room for a hockey rink. But in the end, the Eglinton City Council has to make the decision on whether or not to build a rink, and to what extent. We hope that the Eglinton skate park will be a useful addition to the area, but we can’t help but think that the city could’ve done a better job of making sure that the skate park would be more accessible than it has been.
