A years’ long struggle between a volunteer arena board in Moss Park and Toronto Centre Coun. Chris Moise came to a head this week.
Accusations of tyranny, photos of an emergency exit held open by a hockey stick, and an aborted attempt to have city council fire the rink’s board members all culminated in a new policy that will see the Moss Park Arena governed by a new set of rules.
On Wednesday night, Toronto city councillors singled out just one of its eight volunteer-run arenas, issuing new directives to the board members of the Moss Park Arena that are not asked of any other rink board citywide.
In an interview with TorontoToday, Moise alleged the group has obstructed his efforts to bring a more beautiful arena to a community that deserves the best.
But board members and several local arena users countered that the councillor has acted more like a king, attempting to drive his own agenda while failing to recognize the good work already being done by volunteers.
Citywide, the city’s eight volunteer-run arena boards are tasked, via longstanding policy, with overseeing their rink’s work, ensuring the books are balanced, ice time is fair, and that city staff are supported with long-term planning.
But on Wednesday night, council changed the rules for the Moss Park Arena board alone.
Moss Park Arena singled out
In the coming year, the board is expected to develop a multi-year strategic plan — in which it must explore advertising on the rink’s boards and contemplate possibilities for the arena’s full reconstruction, among other things.
Don Valley East Coun. John Burnside said he was “shocked” the motion made it to council. “I’m almost at a loss for words,” he said.
Burnside said some of the ideas in the motion had merit but “singling out” one board was wrong.
The motion’s sponsor, Toronto Centre Coun. Chris Moise, defended the directive as necessary to reorient a group of volunteers he said were improperly stewarding a crucial community asset.
During debate on the item, Moise showed his colleagues photos he’d taken of the arena, including a hockey stick wedged into an emergency exit, mould around toilets and showers not working.
“How could that be a well-run board?” he asked. “Basic things they should be doing already and they cannot even do that.”
Turning to city staff, Moise asked for details about how much in emergency funding the arena had requested from the city, pointing out how that figure compared to other rinks. He also said he’d been on the “brink” of fundraising $1.2 million for the arena, but claimed the board consistently worked against him in securing it.
He alleged none of the board members live in the ward and that they hadn't invited local men from the shelter across the street to the rink to watch games.
“How can I, as the councillor, turn a blind eye to the inequities happening there?” he said.
Watching the debate from home, however, arena board vice-president Karin Fritzlar said she saw something quite different.
“Shame on him,” she said, of Moise. “Shame on him for bringing something to council without fully understanding it. And shame on him for grandstanding … as a way to prove a point to this board that he’s bigger than us.”
“From day one, he’s operated as if his vote should count for more than one.”
A ‘flashy new arena’
It didn’t take long for the councillor and the board to get off on the wrong foot.
Soon after Moise took office in Nov. 2022, board members said he wasn’t much interested in the day-to-day maintenance issues, instead focusing his energy on activities to build a new arena.
Touring the facility for the first time, the councillor told TorontoToday he was shocked by how dilapidated the building was. He said he knew of other wards that had recently gotten beautiful new arenas and wondered why his ward should be left with a facility so meagre.
“Why is it that the most marginalized community in the city – Moss Park, Regent Park – can’t have a nice rink?”
Board chair Andy Marcus said the board has never been against the idea of a new arena, but said procuring one is not within its scope.
Under the relationship framework between the city and its eight volunteer-run community boards, it’s the city that’s responsible for capital repairs above $50,000.
Marcus said he stressed in early meetings with the councillor the city had neglected the facility for several years and that it was badly in need of capital repairs.
Fritzlar said she and other board members asked Moise for help in securing funding from the city, but she said it wasn’t the councillor’s focus.
“It was too boring for him to advocate for money for new toilets,” she alleged. “He wanted a flashy new arena.”
In an interview with TorontoToday, Moise said he has been advocating at city hall for maintenance funding. He noted in each of the last two years the board requested and received more than $200,000 in emergency repair money.
He acknowledged it’s not the board’s responsibility to secure a new facility, but said there are things within the board’s mandate that they could be doing to improve the rink.
Another arena in Regent Park has advertisements around its ice rink’s boards that bring in revenue to help fund community programming, he said. He wondered why the board wouldn’t think outside the box toward revenue-generating opportunities like that.
“I could have easily just turned a blind eye and just let it be,” he said. “[But] I just don’t feel the status quo is OK.”
A bad Metrolinx meeting, a misfire on fundraising
But as time went on, relations soured.
In July 2023, Fritzlar said Moise “commandeered” a meeting between the board and Metrolinx, demanding the provincial agency build the community a new arena.
Metrolinx is in the early stages of building a subway stop next door to the rink. The meeting, Fritzlar said, had been focused on ensuring how the rink could properly function while construction work was underway.
Board chair Marcus claimed Metrolinx staff were baffled by Moises’ request, and that it ultimately went nowhere.
Asked about the encounter, Moise said he’s had several meetings at City Hall with Metrolinx that board members are not privy to. He said he’s also met with Infrastructure Ontario (IO) and provincial Infrastructure Minister Kinga Surma, exploring funding for a new rink.
“[The board is only] privy to maybe five per cent of the conversations I’ve had with IO and Metrolinx,” he said. “As the councillor, I have to advocate for my community.”
Relations deteriorated further the following winter.
At one board meeting, a real estate development professional joined Moise to present the idea for volunteers to host a summer ball hockey tournament fundraiser at the arena, according to board member Sawyer Buchanan.
The idea was not a hit with the board, however.
Board members pointed out the arena is scheduled with programming year-round and does not remove its ice sheet in the summer — and questioned the developer’s motives.
“I know developers do a lot of free fundraising initiatives in the neighbourhoods in which they’d like to develop to help win merit with councillors and the city,” she said.
Moise told TorontoToday there was nothing unusual about engaging developers to try to help improve the rink.
Since he was getting resistance from the board, Moise said he spoke with other venues about the potential to host fundraisers — from which he told TorontoToday he could have secured $1.2 million for the arena.
“This was all on the side of my desk,” he said. “I have thousands of things going on.”
Asked if he shared these other potential events to the board, the councillor said no.
“[I] did not convey all of my plans with the board because they really were not interested,” he said. “Because of their attitude toward all this, we kind of just stopped.”
From volunteer-run to city-managed?
Tensions escalated in 2024 when Moise attempted to pass a motion that would transfer governance of the arena from the volunteer board, to the city.
Some 40 other arenas are run by the city — the eight volunteer-run rinks are the outliers. In a notice accompanying the motion, which ultimately passed at council, the councillor cited the need for good governance and to ensure the rink was accessible to all.
“All community members, regardless of socioeconomic status, should have access to free programming and drop-in opportunities at Moss Park Arena and, unfortunately, that has not been happening for a very long time,” the brief said.
In response to the motion, city staff penned a report that said existing leagues — a women’s queer hockey league and a free house league, among them — would need to negotiate new ice permits for use of the rink. If the Moss Park Arena transitioned to be city-owned, drop-in rink time and learn to skate programs would run through the venue.
In late June, counter to the pleas of the board and several community members, the city advanced the idea, directing staff to develop a plan to transition the rink to city-run by 2025.
But eight months later, the staff report determined that such a transition would cost the city about $300,000 more each year.
City staff reported on the many ways the rink was serving the local community, including by providing ample free and low-cost programs, as well as free hockey registration and equipment for up to 325 youth.
Last week, a Toronto mom spoke to a council committee about the rink. On the verge of tears, she described how she’d brought her son to the arena for the first time, embarrassed that she didn’t have the money for equipment.
She said staff quickly arranged for free gear, making her son feel at ease.
A move to bin the board
Tension between the rink board and councillor reached a peak this week when Moise introduced a motion calling for the replacement of most members of the board with six new proposed volunteers.
This idea was brought only to council through a process known as a member motion, which councillors can use if they have urgent new business to discuss.
But shortly before council was set to vote on the motion, Moise rescinded it. Asked why in an interview on Thursday, the councillor did not provide an answer.
TorontoToday contacted several of the proposed new board members, but none responded by publication time.
When existing volunteers learned of the attempt to unseat them, they were furious.
In one of dozens of community letters sent to council about the proposed termination, Frizlar expressed extreme concern about the lack of “justification or due process.”
In interviews with TorontoToday, several longtime ice rink users also shared their anger.
Duncan Fremlin, a longtime resident, told TorontoToday he’s used the arena as a skater and hockey player for more than 40 years and has been “more than satisfied” during that time with how the board is running the place.
“If there’s a weak link in all of this, it’s a lack of support from the city at large,” he said. “The place needs investment, there’s no question, but I don’t blame that on the board.”
Fremlin said the councillor's engagement on the issue had been “awful.”
“Leave the board alone,” he said. “They’re doing a great job.”
Ceilidh Briscoe, an organizer of the Women’s Hockey Club of Toronto, agreed, calling the proposed binning of the board “undemocratic.”
It’s not always easy for queer women and trans people to feel safe playing hockey, but it always has at the Moss Park Arena, she said.
The hockey league organizer said she’s unhappy with how Moise had engaged on the issue, encouraging him to be a “contributor” not a “director.”
Moving forward in a good way?
Moise said in an interview Thursday that he hopes he and the board can now move forward “in a good way.”
But in an interview on Friday, Fritzlar said she and the other board members are exhausted.
The longtime figure skater said she’s lost sleep over the difficulty the board has had with the councillor and feels its members have been badly treated.
She called it frustrating that maintenance issues raised with Moise years earlier were used to discredit the board’s governance.
At city council on Wednesday night, Etobicoke Centre Coun. Stephen Holyday, said he worried Moise’s motion would have a “chill effect” on volunteerism.
“Others watch and they [might] say, ‘Hey, why would I volunteer on a city committee or in the arena in my neighbourhood, if next thing you know, city council is going to take over us?’”
Frizlar said she’ll work with staff to try to implement the recommendations, but expressed concern about relations with the local councillor going forward.
“No one on our board signed up to be fighting city hall,” she said. “We signed up to help this arena.”
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CORRECTION: This story has been changed to clarify that the leagues currently using the Moss Park Arena will not necessarily lose their space if the rink becomes city-owned.
