ice skating toronto

Viral video shows people in Toronto ice skating on what looks like glass

A surreal 24-second-long clip video shot from the perspective of someone skating along an ice trail at Toronto's Colonel Samuel Smith Park is blowing the minds of people all over the world this week as it tears through social media.

Originally uploaded to TikTok by a user called Ourinsuranceguy on November 28, the clip starts with a young man wearing hockey skates gliding along the impossibly-glossy trail.

The video's creator, who describes himself as a dad, husband and insurance agent from London, Ontario, follows the guy in the hockey skates while filming on skates himself. A couple comes into frame up ahead, followed by the unmistakable Power House Recreation Centre.

All the while, we hear Perry Como's holiday classic 'It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas.' 

Captioned on TikTok simply with "Skating trails in Toronto" (and a bunch of wintery hashtags), the clip has racked up more than 700,000 likes and a staggering 1.9K comments. And that's on TikTok alone.

Many more people have ripped the video to share on Twitter, some to praise how cool Toronto is and express their intentions to visit... proving that the BBC might actually be right about tourists enjoying winter here.

"THIS IS A REAL THING???" wrote one commenter on the original TikTok post. "I'M OBSESSED."

"SKATING TRAILS?" wrote another. "Imagine vibing to ur Christmas playlist just skating around man."

Idyllic as the scene appears once you know that ice is involved, some people have also commented to say that they were fooled (and terrified / grossed out / bewildered) by the crystal-clear ice.

"This brings me great anxiety. All skaters fear concrete," wrote one. "What in the skating on concrete?" wrote another. "I know it's ice but it's so clear it looks like they're just skating on concrete lmao."

What the people are actually skating on happens to be the first-ever ice skating trail to be built in Toronto, which is cool.

Another fun but not-so-festive fact: The 78-acre Etobicoke park in which the trail can be found was built on the former grounds of the Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital, a Victorian-era "lunatic asylum" (as they called it back then) that was shuttered in 1979 due to various disturbing reasons.

Lead photo by

ourinsuranceguy


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