Parks, Recreation and Culture Winter 2025 Activity Guide

Register online at recreation.nanaimo.ca General Inquiries 250-756-5200 4 ARENAS in NANAIMO Did You Know? So much more than public skating • Besides public skating, arenas are home to skating lessons, hockey games, lacrosse play, and they host a variety of special events and programs when the ice is out. • Even in the summer months, there is at least 1 surface of ice. • It takes 5 days to put in a sheet of ice, and the ice is only 1.5” thick. • The ideal temperature for ice is 20° farenheight (-7 celsius). • The arenas start out as cement floors. After they are initially flooded, they are then painted white and game lines are added. • The ice is painted white, and then the lines, dots and circles are painted. • Our four sheets of ice are 200ft long by 85ft wide which is considered NHL size. • The arenas in Nanaimo get used a lot (5:30 am-12:30 am in the fall/winter and 7:30 am-10:30 pm in the spring/summer). Arena MaintenanceWorkers are highly trained individuals, not simply facilitating your recreational need but also ensuring the safety of our refrigeration systems for all staff and public. The City of Nanaimo has moved to an almost fully electric fleet of Ice Surfacers (previously propane) as a way to help reduce carbon emissions. Ice Surfacers are classified as “Heavy Machinery”. We should not get complacent around these slow moving machines at the rinks, because they have the potential to be just as dangerous as if we were playing around excavators and dump trucks in the gravel yard. Arenas use melt pits for the snow removed from the ice instead of making a snow pile behind the facility.