Our story
From a nine-child pilot over the 2025 winter break to a full week camp with its own brand, in under two years.
2025: the idea
Andrew Adair founded Open Ice Initiative in 2025 as a Grade 10 student at Upper Canada College, on a single premise: no child should be left off the ice because of financial barriers. The first year went into building a student executive, finding coaching, and persuading businesses that backing free hockey for Toronto kids was worth doing.
December 2025: the pilot
The first camp ran from 29 December 2025 to 2 January 2026 at Ted Reeve Community Arena. Nine children from St. Paul Catholic School in Regent Park attended, most of them stepping onto the ice for the first time. Every one of them left with the equipment they needed to keep playing.
January to March 2026: keeping them playing
A camp is a week. Campers who wanted to keep going moved into weekly Saturday sessions through the Horizons programme at Upper Canada College, from January to March 2026.
March 2026: the breakthrough
The March break camp ran from 16 to 20 March at Ted Reeve, with Cameron Gaunce, a fifteen year professional and TSN analyst, as lead coach. CP24 covered the camp from the arena. CTV News ran a national feature. Beach Metro News and TorontoToday both covered it. The camp roughly doubled the size of the pilot.
August 2026: the first full week under our own brand
Summer Camp 2026 runs from 4 to 7 August at Leaside Arena. Equipment has been ordered for a cohort several times the size of the pilot. Seventeen executive members each carry a recruitment target, reaching out through roughly thirty Toronto community groups spanning neighbourhood parent networks, hockey parent communities and newcomer family groups.
What comes next
Six camps a year, three at Leaside Arena and three at Ted Reeve Community Arena. Beyond that, a replication model so that the same programme can run in another city.