Indoors or outdoors. Canada, Scotland, or USA. Burns weekend, Family Day weekend, or the International Kilt Skate weekend. This kilt skate season has been one of the best years yet for the Great Canadian Kilt Skate.

Renfrewshire, Scotland, had a great response to our second annual Kilt Skate with over 300 skaters taking part in the public skate and around 25 people wearing kilts.

Kilts and tartans: wear ‘em if you got ‘em. Toronto’s Great Canadian Kilt Skate was one of 15 held this year in Canada, the United States and Scotland.

The St. Andrew’s Society of Montreal has been hosting kilt skates since 2015. It’s a chance for family and friends to get together in the midwinter.

The Fergus Scottish Festival always has a great turnout for its annual Great Canadian Kilt Skate. It’s a family event open to skaters of all ages …

I'm not gonna lie it was cold, like really cold(I heard minus 20 with the wind chill!), wind gusts up to 60 km/hr and by times heavy snow, But yet they came braving kilts and bare knees…in numbers that surpassed last year!

Once again this year, we coordinated our kilt skate with Moncton’s annual winter festival, PolarFest, on Monday, Feb 16 at 2pm.

The Township of South Glengarry has a strong tradition of combining the Great Canadian Kilt Skate with other elements that turn a kilt skate into a winter fair. As usual, the festivities included free skating at the Char-Lan Recreation Centre in Williamstown. Add to that: free hot chocolate and cupcakes.

There were many new faces at the kilt skate this year and we hope to see them again next year as we keep growing the made-in-Ottawa tradition of skating in kilts.

On a bright, sunny day with temperatures around 1°C, Winnipeg’s Great Canadian Kilt Skate was a tremendous success. Over a two-hour period at the Riley Duck Pond in Assiniboine Park, an estimated 200 people.

It was arguably our biggest crowd to date, and we couldn’t be happier to see this event continue to grow with each year.

We have always hoped that the day would come when the kilt skate phenomenon would reach a tipping point where organizations with no connection to SSO would launch their own event without any central guidance. In 2024 the news reports of a Freddy Kilted Skate in Fredericton, New Brunswick, was a proud moment for us. It proved that the seed that had been planted at a Rideau Canal skkating party had taken root. The kilt skate idea was growing organically.

What an exceptional year it has been for our Great Canadian Kilt Skate community! From January to March, some 14 kilt skates were held in communities across Canada.  The events generated innovative ideas and remarkable enthusiasm. The Scottish Society of Ottawa (SSO) is grateful for the creativity and spirit displayed each year, 

For 10 years — ever since the first kilt skates to celebrate Sir John A. Macdonald’s bicentennial — the organizers at the Scottish Society of Ottawa have tried hard to find someone in Halifax to bring this proudly Scottish city — capital of “New Scotland” — into the national kilt skate family. This year Halifax made its debut with pizazz!

William Petrie of the Clans and Scottish Societies of Canada and Kristy Van Hoven of the Guthrie School of Dance brought the Great Canadian Kilt Skate back for its second year at the Evergreen Brick Works in Toronto’s Don Valley.

On Heritage Day, February 17th, the AHS hosted our third annual Great Canadian Kilt Skate! For those who don’t know, the Kilt Skate was conceived to mark the bicentennial of Canada’s first prime minister, in 2015. Since then, it has grown to include communities across Canada and even beyond, with skates taking place in the United States and even overseas!!!

One of the many things the Great Canadian Kilt Skate celebrates each year is the hardiness of the Scottish people. That ruggedness and resilience were tested on Monday as temperatures plunged close to -30 C while windchills made it feel closer to -40 C, and weather advisories warned against being outside much longer than a few seconds.

Under a weather warning and in the frigid cold of a daytime high of -22c with a wind chill up to -30c, some hearty Calgarians took to the ice in Kilts to celebrate the 11th Annual Great Canadian Kilt Skate.

The professional ice hockey outfit teamed up with Scottish Society of Ottawa, in Canada, who organised the Great Canadian Kilt Skate to celebrate the strong connection between their country and Scotland.

And back in Petawawa, the Canadian kilt skate was a big hit — especially with a new generation of kilt skaters.