How one city learned to love winter again
Skating trails through the forest, saunas by the river and a city that stopped hiding indoors. Here is how to borrow the idea.
- Desk
- Outdoors
- Format
- How-to
- Reading time
- 9 min
- Published
- Oct 3, 2026
For years the city treated winter as something to endure: get to work, get home, wait for spring. Then a few neighbourhood groups started asking a different question. What if the cold was the attraction?
Start with a path
The first project was modest: a skating loop through a park, flooded by volunteers with garden hoses. It was rough, bumpy and packed every weekend. The city noticed and took over the flooding the next year.
We don't fight winter. We invite it to dinner.
Add warmth
People will stay out in the cold much longer if there is somewhere to warm up. Fire pits, a hot-drink stand and eventually a wood-fired sauna on the riverbank turned short visits into whole afternoons.
Make it a habit
The real change came with regular events: night skates on Fridays, a lantern walk on the darkest evening of the year, a cold-water dip that grew from a dozen brave souls to several hundred.
Try it on your street
Pick one evening a week, one patch of ground and one warm thing, whether that is soup, a fire or a thermos. Put up a sign. Be there every week, even when only three people come.
Winter is still long here, and still cold. But ask people now and many will tell you it is their favourite season, which is something nobody would have said ten years ago.
“We don't fight winter. We invite it to dinner.”
— A neighbourhood organiser
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