The Nestaweya River Trail first opened as a
Zamboni cleaned skating path in 1990, but evidence on Winnipeggers using the rivers as an ice skating trail date back to 1872. Charles Napier Bell, A military man under the command of Sir
Garnet Wolseley, fighting in the
Red River Rebellion, is said to have introduced ice skating to the area. After
Louis Riel fled Winnipeg, an 18-year old Bell took a trip to Ontario and returned with ice skates he used in the winter of 1872 and got a lot of attention from the locals. As his actions became more noticed, he was joined by other militiamen who had come from Ontario and were stationed at the Osborne barracks, near the current
Manitoba Legislative Building. The troops cleared a space on the Assiniboine River, near the modern Osborne Bridge, and named it as Victoria Rink, in honour of the Queen. In January, 1873, local media had begun promoting the rink and declared ice skating to be the biggest new activity in town. In November, 1874, After the Red River Colony and the City of Winnipeg merged, new construction began on Winnipeg's Amphitheatre, a seasonal skating rink on the Red River maintained by the city. The rink was an initial success, until the warming huts collapsed in a winter storm halfway through its first season. The first reports of
ice hockey being played on the river come from the
Winnipeg Free Press in the winter of 1886-87. The story goes that Patrick Anderson Macdonald, who also founded the
Assiniboine Curling Club and the
Winnipeg Rowing Club, brought the first hockey sticks to Manitoba. As Winnipeg expanded and the prominence of indoor rinks and neighbourhood maintained flooded outdoor rinks developed, the activity of skating on the rivers themselves diminished until the 1990s, when the organizers of the
Festival du Voyageur began to clean off parts of a bend in the Red, near
Whittier Park. Since then, the Trail opens with varied lengths and times of operations and is maintained by the non-profit organization that runs
The Forks. The length can range from a couple of kilometres to setting a
Guinness Book of World Records length of 9.3 kilometers (6.1 miles) in 2008. The trail broke its own record and extended to 10 kilometres in 2017-18. The record for the longest year of operation was the winter of 2019-20, when the trail was open for 72 days. The Plaza at The Forks provides skate rentals and a place to have food and drinks inside along the trail. Additionally the plaza has two skating rinks, one under the main canopy and another in front of the CN Stage at the
Canadian Museum of Human Rights. The two rinks are connected by an above ground skating trail and supplemented by other local vendors and musicians. == Events ==