Well over 150 Brantford residents hit the ice to skate with Jolly Old St. Nick at the Wayne Gretzky Sports Centre on Saturday, December 13, 2025.
Karen Bocskay, Skater Development Chair for the Brant Figure Skating Club, said although the organization has been putting on the event for decades, this was the first time it was opened to the public.
“This year we decided, instead of just having an in-house Skate with Santa for our skaters, let’s invite the whole city and have everyone come out to enjoy this fun experience together,” she said. “The City has been a big supporter of ours and was so gracious to help us do this as a joint venture, so this is a free event and we’re giving out lots of hot chocolate and Timbits for everyone to enjoy too.”
Youngsters and adults alike could be seen interacting with Santa and his reindeer, showing off their skills, braving the ice for the first time or enjoying time together as a family.
Elyssa Jones, who brought her ten-year-old son, Jack MacLeod, out for an afternoon skate, said it was nice to do something fun together without breaking the bank around the holidays.
“I think it’s nice, especially when you spend so much money on Christmas shopping and getting ready for the holidays, to have something free to do where everyone can come out and enjoy it,” she said. “Jack hasn’t done a lot of skating either, so it was nice to come and try it for free and I think he enjoyed it. He wasn’t too sure when we got out there at first, but we pushed through and we both had a great time. It was also a nice topping on the cake that they had hot chocolate and Timbits for all the kids, so that was fun.”
As the Skate with Santa event came to a close, many residents stuck around to watch the figure skating club’s traditional Holiday Skate-Off.
“The skaters are all grouped into three teams, each led by one of our teen skaters, and they’ve all been tasked to choreograph a short routine to a Christmas or holiday song,” said Bocskay. “So they’ll compete against one another using that skate, and then each team has to send out different skaters to perform various figure skating elements and compete against the other teams, and at the end, they’ll declare an overall winner which is always fun.”
The Skater Development Chair went on to say the skate-off is a great opportunity for the teens to develop their leadership skills.
“The team captain does all of the decision making so it’s a real leadership opportunity for the senior skaters, and it’s fun for the little ones, because most of these senior skaters are not far from being a coach,” said Bocskay. “They’re all our program assistants for CanSkate already, so it’s just a matter of them being old enough before they become coaches at the club and it’s good for them to have that homegrown experience.”
While the club has been in operation since 1947, Bocskay said they’re always looking to get their name out there and connect with the community, adding that making the Skate with Santa event public was a great way to do that.
“We want to make sure everyone knows that we have this skating club in the city because there are a lot of people who don’t realize we’re here,” she said. “You know, we’ve been putting on our big Flashing Blades show for 75 years now, and some people don’t even know about it, but it’s almost like a version of Stars on Ice. That’s going to be on March 14, and we hope to have some Olympians coming to perform in it after the Olympics, and we’ve got Olympic coaches choreographing it as well. It’s going to be a really great show and we hope this will remind people to keep an eye out, or to inspire them to sign their little ones up for lessons with the club.”
Kimberly De Jong’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative.The funding allows her to report rural and agricultural stories from Blandford-Blenheim and Brant County. Reach her at kimberly.dejong@brantbeacon.ca.
