Frosty Friday: All Things Skate

One of the many events that stands out in memories of the Frosty Festival is skating. Whether it be figure skating performances by local skaters, special appearances from guest skaters from the mainland, one of the costumed skates or a family free skate, getting out on the ice has been an important part of the Frosty Festival from it's inception. 

This Frosty Friday we are celebrating all things skate and have compiled some memories from our interviewees as well as pictures from throughout the years. 

Costumed Skate, 1998. 
Image courtesy of the City of Mount Pearl.

Pray for the snow but, yeah not a whole lot, but we had many storms. We had ice skaters one time flew in from the mainland, one of them stayed with me, and one stayed with Barb Predham. I mean these were top figure skaters in Canada. We had a snowstorm, it was so bad that I had to walk from my house to Park Avenue to get the taxi to drive those to the airport, they never got out of the house for the weekend. - Agnes Murphy, 2020

Figure skating performance, 1987. 
Image courtesy of the City of Mount Pearl.

Figure Skaters at the 1986 Frosty Festival. 
Image courtesy of the Frosty Festival.

Tell me about a time you laughed the hardest at the Frosty Festival.

Laughed the hardest? Oh my god, yes. Well one in particular was the figure skating. We had a competition of course, Skate Mount Pearl, and we were all set to go, we had judges coming, we had guest skaters coming from the mainland to perform at our show. Early morning, we went to the Mount Pearl, well it wasn’t the Glacier then, it was on Smallwood Drive and we used to call it the Tin Can, if you can remember and we went there, went upstairs, getting all ready, looked out through the window, looked down on the ice and saw this large hole, right where the hockey net was, and we said OH MY GOD, what do we do now? Anyway, lots of shuffling and moving and course all we could do was laugh because you could not have a big hole in the ice with all those figure skaters. But anyway, it all worked out, it was the fault of the Zamboni and whatever, so that was a funny thing. - Agnes Murphy, 2020

Figure Skaters, 1986. 
Image courtesy of the Frosty Festival.

Agnes Murphy awarding a figure skating trophy, 1988. 
Image courtesy of the Frosty Festival.

Children skating at the Tin Can, 1983. 
Image courtesy of the Frosty Festival. 

Figure skating, 1990.
Image courtesy of the Frosty Festival.

Figure skating, 1990.
Image courtesy of the Frosty Festival.

Figure skating competitors, 1992. 
Image courtesy of the Frosty Festival.

You know as a young parent still living in Mount Pearl with my own children I would have taken part with them in the skates, you the general skates they would have had up at the Smallwood Arena or I guess up at the Glacier by that time. Any of the free things, like the swimming things that they would have had on I would have taken the kids to that and I would have participated, you know we would have participated in all of the children’s activities, the hot chocolate. - Stephanie Collins, 2020

Costumed skate, 2005. 
Image courtesy of the Frosty Festival.

If you have memories of the Mount Pearl Frosty Festival, share them online at https://bit.ly/2H6vrZb.

Admiralty House Communications Museum will also be collecting photographs from the community to scan for this project. If you have photographs you are willing to share please contact the research team at admiraltyhouse@mountpearl.ca.