Fantastic year for outdoor skating rinks across Waterloo region as winter co-operates

It's been a great year for outdoor ice rinks around Waterloo region.

CBC K-W noticed the rink at Kitchener's Victoria Park has been going strong for several weeks after a lacklustre 2024.

The photo below shows the same area of the park on Feb. 20, 2024 (top) and Feb. 20, 2025.

City spokesperson Krystin Scheels told CBC News that there are more than 25 outdoor rinks in Kitchener this year, with three on school board properties and the rest in parks and community centres.

The city maintains the rink in front of city hall and the one in Victoria Park. All the rest are managed by community volunteers.

"Hundreds of dedicated volunteers spend countless hours shoveling, flooding, and maintaining rinks—often during late-night hours when ice-making conditions are optimal," Scheels said in an email.

"The colder temperatures we've been experiencing are beneficial for maintaining the ice surfaces. We've been having a great season so far with temperatures ideal for skating."

The cold temperatures also means the refrigeration system that keeps the ice rink going at Carl Zehr Square only needs to run at a minimal level, she said.

And people who go to city hall to skate will notice a new Canada flag in the ice, which was put there to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the flag.

In Waterloo, there are more than 30 free outdoor rinks run by volunteers in neighbourhoods across the city, city spokesperson Shirley Luu said in an email.

"They've reported lots of community use so far this season, as the weather has been very conducive," Luu said.

"The rink in Waterloo Public Square has been operating smoothly as well, with evenings and weekends being some of the busiest times. The heavy snow the past week did cause some small delays with clearing the rink, but crews did a great job handling the challenge."

Tracking outdoor rink conditions

Robert McLeman is a professor of geography and environmental studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. He also runs a website called Rink Watch.org, a citizen science project that helps measure the effects of global warming by getting people to report on their outdoor rinks.

Since it was started in 2012, information about more than 1,800 rinks has been collected on the site. McLeman says they use that information to "figure out precisely what are the climatic conditions that are most suitable for outdoor skating and some of the challenges that are associated with it as well."

He says the critical temperature threshold for really good skating conditions is –5 C. 

"Once we know those temperature conditions, we can then go through historical weather data for that area and recreate past skating seasons," he said.

"We've done this going way back to the 1940s and we can put it into climate models that project future temperatures and see what will happen, 20, 40, 60 years into the future." 

He says it's been an incredible year in southern Ontario for outdoor rinks and people are really taking advantage of them.

"We find out that the reasons people build these rinks are to create neighbourhood play areas for themselves, for their kids and for the neighbour's kids at a time of year when, let's face it, the weather's not great," he told CBC News.

"The days are short, the nights are long and instead of having the kids in the basement playing video games, playing NHL hockey on their consoles, they're outside playing hockey, skating with their friends. And so that's a great thing."

Want to tell us about your outdoor rink or winter activity? Email CBC K-W with your story and photos.