{"id":1498,"date":"2007-01-30T18:16:52","date_gmt":"2007-01-30T22:16:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=1498"},"modified":"2013-01-21T13:04:57","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T18:04:57","slug":"magical-skating-moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2007\/01\/30\/magical-skating-moment\/","title":{"rendered":"Magical skating moment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm1.static.flickr.com\/30\/99460198_37b15d4e8a.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>In medieval European chronicles, the authors would make a special note of years in which the local river froze over, which might happen once a decade (depending on where you were, of course). Inevitably, an impromptu festival happened &#8212; everyone went out on the ice, sliding, skating, playing games, even lighting bonfires (which was perhaps not entirely wise). It was a rare and special event.<\/p>\n<p>A few years ago, during the last deep freeze we experienced in Toronto, some friends and I walked into High Park one night and found ourselves at an apparently frozen Grenadier Pond. After a brief hesitation, we walked out on the ice and experienced a really magical moment. We realized the freeze had created one of the largest completely open spaces in Toronto. We did some serious sliding along the ice, and hollered at each other from long distances that you rarely experience uninterrupted in the city.<\/p>\n<p>Well, it looks like Grenadier Pond has frozen over again. It used to be that the City of Toronto would test the ice and open it up for skating on the occasional years when it froze over sufficiently, but that fell by the wayside after the post-amalgamation cutbacks. Now new Parks and Environment committee chair Paula Fletcher wants the City to open up the pond again &#8212; there&#8217;s a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.canada.com\/nationalpost\/news\/toronto\/story.html?id=7cd71796-18ff-4931-80d5-6eaf769b183c\">good article about it in the National Post today<\/a>. Good for her. Toronto should enjoy its rare moment of winter magic.<\/p>\n<p><em>Grenadier Pond photo by <a href=\"http:\/\/aidanfotos.com\">Bouke Salverda<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In medieval European chronicles, the authors would make a special note of years in which the local river froze over, which might happen once a decade (depending on where you were, of course). Inevitably, an impromptu festival happened &#8212; everyone went out on the ice, sliding, skating, playing games, even lighting bonfires (which was perhaps<a href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2007\/01\/30\/magical-skating-moment\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"sr-only\">&#8220;Magical skating moment&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4006,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21758,13],"tags":[28,976,593,641,4319,656,1316,19],"class_list":["post-1498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community","category-green-space","tag-behaviour","tag-chair","tag-location","tag-national-post","tag-parks-and-environment-committee","tag-paula-fletcher","tag-the-national-post","tag-toronto"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Magical skating moment - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2007\/01\/30\/magical-skating-moment\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Magical skating moment - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In medieval European chronicles, the authors would make a special note of years in which the local river froze over, which might happen once a decade (depending on where you were, of course). 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