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Open Ice is opening two more rinks for the Christmas camp
North Toronto Memorial Arena and Upper Canada College’s Wilder Arena join Leaside and Ted Reeve, taking the programme to four locations across the city.
Toronto, Ontario. Open Ice Initiative will run its Christmas camp across four arenas. Leaside Memorial Community Gardens and Ted Reeve Community Arena, both of which ran this summer, are joined by North Toronto Memorial Arena and Upper Canada College’s Wilder Arena.
The reason is geography rather than ambition. A free camp is not free if a family has to cross the city twice a day to reach it, and the single most common thing that stops a child coming back is the trip. Four rinks means four catchments, and North Toronto Memorial in particular is reachable by transit from most of the north end.
Capacity has roughly doubled at every camp Open Ice has run, and every camp has still been oversubscribed. The winter expansion is what doubling again looks like.
The camp opens on 15 December. Applications open in the autumn.
A free camp is not free if a family has to cross the city twice a day to reach it.
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