Canada Winter Games: February 11 - 27, 2011

After months and months of advertising and preparation (probably years) the 2011 Canada Winter Games have started. The largest multi-sport winter event for young Canadian athletes, the Canada Winter Games are held every four years in a different province or territory across Canada. The Canada Winter Games are like a mini-Olympics, with the strictly amateur athletes competing for their province/territory in a variety of different sports ranging from judo to wheelchair basketball to snowboarding.

I had the privilege of volunteering at the Canada Winter Games in 1995, when I lived in Grande Prairie, Alberta. It's interesting now to have another chance to experience the games as a spectator some fifteen years later.

(Yes, you're right, the mascots for the Halifax Games are Nova Scotia Duck Trolling Retrievers. That's very clever of you to notice.)

I'm breaking form here by writing about the Games while they're still ongoing, but since I'm too cheap to buy a ticket for any of the other events, I had to settle for watching the only free event I could access without a car - the long track speed skating competitions at the outdoor oval.

Long track speed skating has many events, ranging from 100 metres, to 3000 metres. With the oval being 400 metres in circumference, a 3000 metre race entails skating around the rink seven and a half exhausting laps at high speed. Considering a fast 3000 metre time for a male is four and a half minutes, and the body starts creating lactic acid well before twenty five seconds into a race of that kind, you can imagine how painful it must be for the athletes.

(Have you ever noticed how the winner never looks quite as tired as the loser, even though they've raced the same race and the loser, in a sense, worked less hard?)

(After a hard half-hour of watching others exert themselves, it's nice to be able to spend $6 on a messy, sloppy, calorie packed pastry, that will likely spill all over you or on the ground, before you get a chance to eat any of it. Beaver Tails: A Canadian original.)

HRM Point of Interest #21: Outdoor Oval

Later this month, some many hundreds of the best amateur athletes in Canada will arrive in Halifax for the 2011 Canada Winter Games. In preparation for this, the city of Halifax built a massive outdoor long track speed skating oval, the circumference of which being larger than the length of three football fields.

Since the oval was built on the Commons, the city decided to provide a once-in-a-life-time opportunity for the citizens of Halifax to lace up a pair of skates and skate on an Olympic sized speed skating oval for free.

7 days a week, from... well, at least before Christmas, until just before the Games start on February 11 the city of Halifax has/will open up the oval (with its own Zamboni) to the public. There are even free skating lessons offered daily, and free helmet and skate rentals too.

From my understanding, the city of Halifax had planned to make this a one time affair. However, the response from the citizens of Halifax has been so overwhelming, that various aldermen have supported making the oval a permanent winter fixture on the Commons.

I, for one, couldn't be more in favour of such a move. While I was skating on the oval a few weeks ago, there were at least 300 other people on the ice, not including the 500 other people waiting to get skates, drinking hot chocolate, or simply resting.

Not only would it be a fantastic use of a public space that is otherwise wasted during the winter months, but it's also an obviously effective way of getting citizens to be more active (in a country where this is badly needed). In fact, I'm prepared to make an EP Declaration right now, that this is the best use of public funds by a city, ever!