Rink Review: East York Memorial Arena

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Leisure skating hours at this indoor public rink on the northeast corner of Cosburn & Cedarvale Avenues in East York are rather anemic — just two hours a week, 11:30 am – 1:30 pm on Sundays. It’s a shame, because the facility provides a high-quality full-sized skating surface without a huge number of people crowding the ice.

The rink isn’t as crowded as many of the higher-profile sites in the city, and the ice was in very good condition for our visit there. Unfortunately, we discovered that the on-site pro shop and skate sharpening booth were closed during the public skating hours, so we had to make do with our semi-dull blades. The rink and facility are both very clean and well-maintained. Many indoor arenas are built with all the ambiance of a bunker, and the East York Memorial Arena was no excpetion. But a mid-90s renovation really opened up the entrance and added a lot of space and light to the public areas of the arena, making it feel very comfortable and inviting.

As at most public rinks, the leisure skates are supervised by barely-interested teenagers who don’t really pay too much attention to what anyone is doing. A couple of kids were roughhousing a bit on the ice, getting in the way of some of the other skaters, and none of the three skate supervisors did anything. I don’t even think they noticed.

East York Memorial Arena information:

  • Facility type: Indoor arena.
  • Public skating hours: Sundays, 11:30 am – 1:30 pm.
  • Public skating cost: Free
  • Accessibility: The facility is barrier-free, but there’s a small step down to the ice surface.
  • Public transit: 87 Cosburn (any branch) from Main Street or Broadview Stations to Cedarvale Ave; or 91 Woodbine (any branch) north from Woodbine Station to Cosburn, then walk one block east to the Arena.
  • Parking: A small on-site lot, local on-street, and another large lot one block north.
  • Lockers: No.
  • Change rooms: Yes.
  • Washrooms: Yes.
  • Skate rental: No.
  • On-site services: Snack bar, pro shop, skate sharpening (the pro shop and skate sharpening seem to be closed during the public skating hours).
  • Nearby services / after-skate meal / snacks: The East York Curling Club is kitty-corner from the Arena on the south side of Cosburn and has a quick-service restaurant and licensed bar. There are a handful of convenience stores and restaurants on Woodbine Ave. nearby, but you’ll probably want to go down to Danforth Ave. to get any real selection. There’s also a short restaurant strip about 1.5 km west of the Arena on Cosburn, just across from Dieppe Park.

On a scale of 1-10:

  • Crowding: 6
  • Ice surface: 7
  • Ambiance: 7
  • Cleanliness (washrooms, change rooms, etc.): 7
  • Ease of getting there: 7
  • Overall: 7

A mission statement of sorts

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Actually, it seems that it’s the second blog entry that’s the difficult one.

One of the reasons that I’ve resisted starting a blog for so long — aside from sheer laziness, of course — is that I’ve seen far too many get bogged down in the mundane details of the author’s life and I wanted to be sure my own site could avoid that fate. The various incarnations of my web site over the last 13 years have been notable for their near-complete lack of detail about me and my life. I’d like to continue that tradition, so if you catch me writing about what I had for dinner last night or how fascinating I find the squirrels in my backyard, you have my permission to give me 30 lashes with a wet noodle.

That said, I intend this blog to be about all aspects of life in and around Toronto, with a focus on the city as experienced on foot and by bike. I realize that I’m not breaking any new ground here — there are at least a jillion Toronto-centric blogs — but I hope to be able to bring a slightly different perspective to this very broad topic.

Like most new bloggers, I have a handful of issues that I’d like to concentrate on. Either you’ll see the patterns starting to emerge over the next few weeks, or you’ll see the blog sporadically updated with short meaningless entries before I abandon it entirely. Your guess is as good as mine at this point.