Edmontonians laced up and hit the ice Friday night for the return of the city's longest-running winter festival.
The 33rd annual Silver Skate Festival runs until Feb. 20 and includes an outdoor movie theater, where the films from the International Festival of Winter Cinema will be projected onto a snow screen.
"We've got a whole bunch of arts, culture, recreation, sports and culinary delights," said Erin Diloreto, Silver Skate executive producer. "I'm really excited to tell our story and there's fun activities for everyone."
This year, Diloreto said the international snow sculpture symposium will include teams from Wales, Spain and Germany competing alongside four other local teams.
Rob McLeod (also known as "Frisbee Rob") returned to Hawrelak Park on Saturday to try and set a new world record for a frisbee throw, run and catch on ice skates. The current record, held by McLeod, is just over 92 metres and was set at the 2018 Silver Skate event.
He did not break his own record, only throwing the frisbee 79 metres.
"Today the wind was tricky. When I showed up the wind was in the opposite direction of what I’ve been practicing. We tried the other direction, and the wind just wasn’t there. I still had a good one, 79 metres, but sometimes you just can’t find that right line," McLeod told CTV News Edmonton.
He said people tuned in from as far away as Europe to watch him attempt the record.
"There was a teacher here, and she teaches kids in Ukraine, so they were tuning in from Ukraine, which is pretty neat to check out the record attempt."
Several races will also take place at the event, including skating races, a winter triathlon and an ice duathlon involving a combination of running and skating.
Other activities like snowshoeing and cross country skiing are also available, as well as installations including an Indigenous pavilion, fire sculptures and a winter market.
Diloreto says living in Edmonton means a lot of winter, and festivals like Silver Skate, the Flying Canoe Volant and the Deep Freeze Byzantine Winter Festival are all ways to celebrate what the city has to offer all year round.
The event is free to attend and a free shuttle will run from the University of Alberta for the duration of the festival.
"There's probably snow on this parkland longer in the year than there's actually grass if we really want to take a look at it," she added. "We're so great at telling our summer story with our summer festivals... we're starting to tell our winter story and I think that's just as important.
A full list of events and information can be found on the Silver Skate website.
