Not long after Shilpa Prabhakara finished lacing up her bright white figure skates at the Harbourfront Centre's outdoor skating rink this week she was on her back.
Prabhakara and about eight other novice skaters took to the ice like a herd of young fawns on Tuesday, lock-kneed and trembling as they stepped tenderly over the frozen surface.
Prabhakara, originally from India, took a few careful steps and then watched as her skates slipped out from beneath her, sending her backward with a heavy thud. After slowly lifting herself up, she took a couple more halted steps and fell again.
Such is the plight for many adults learning to skate for the first time – a Canadian rite of passage often conquered by children as young as four years of age.
Prabhakara's own four-year-old daughter also takes skating classes every week, and the vision of weekend skating with her growing girl is what prompted Prabhakara to take her life in her own hands on the ice.
"My main motivation to do this is my daughter. She needs to get active and now that we are living downtown we have no choice but to look at the things that are around us," she told CTVToronto.ca during her second-ever skating class.
"I want to learn for her, but breaking a bone at my age would be pretty silly."
It is impossible to say how many adults in Toronto are in the same boat as Prabhakara, learning for the first time how to thrive while blades are bound to their feet. But at any time during the winter hundreds are learning to skate in backyard rinks, with friends or through courses offered at public rinks.
Toronto's parks and recreation department currently offers dozens of adult skating courses at arenas across the city, while a handful of private clubs and groups also urge novices come out to practice the winter recreation.
At the Harbourfront Centre's Natrel Rink, where a frozen pond sits on the edge of the vast and unfrozen Lake Ontario, adult courses are held throughout the winter. Scores of new skaters take four-week courses on how to skate, how to stop and even how to fall.
During an evening class last Tuesday, instructor Brittney Filek-Gibson led a group of nine learners through a series of drills.
As the initiates stepped gingerly across the ice, thrusting their arms outward in a desperate search for balance, Filek-Gibson called on them to hop, take minimal strides and how to get up when they fall down – which happened a lot.
"I have a lot of respect for the adults who come out and try it because by the time you are an adult you are smart enough to know that if you fall down it will hurt and you have a lot farther to go before you hit the ice," Filek-Gibson said. "Kids bounce, adults bounce less."
After speaking with members of the class it became clear that the pain of falling ranked highly on their list of concerns. During a one hour class, nearly every student fell at least once.
"They say it doesn't hurt be we know that it does," student Shivani Nene said with a laugh as she unlaced a pair of figure skates. "I already knew how to stop, but I still need to work on my balance."
Filek-Gibson says adults who join the classes start at a variety of skill levels. Some who have never skated before take to it naturally; others who have had practice still struggle.
"I love the first class, because everybody is terrified and everybody falls down a lot," she said. "By the end of it almost everyone can get to the other end of the rink, even if it is just by walking."
The Harbourfront Centre's rink is one of the city's best draws once the winter air turns cold. Scores of skaters – from the naturally graceful to the clumsily confident – speed around the kidney-shaped pool every night of the week.
On the weekends, when DJs play music and the venue evolves into a dance club on ice, every inch of the rink is covered by bodies, creating a mesh of colourful jackets, dark toques, ski pants, jeans and even the occasional T-shirt.
Regular visitors skate past first-time visitors while tourists lucky enough to have been tipped off to the venue learn the cadence and join the flow.
Most weekday evenings, a small section of the rink of sectioned off for training courses where teens, children and adults gather to learn what the fuss is all about.
Filek-Gibson, herself a skater since childhood (although she speaks modestly about her abilities) says she is always excited to meet new students and find out what brought them out to learn a new activity.
"We have quite a diverse audience. We have people who are new Canadians who … are going through a rite of passage. Our winter is usually long and miserable, so you'd better find a way to enjoy it," she said, adding that a lot of students were born and raised in Canada, but have never skated before.
"The new Canadians are usually the ones who are really excited to be here. Others who grew up in Canada but never learned are sometimes like, ‘Oh boy, here we go.'"
Luis Gutierrez moved to Toronto from Peru six years ago and decided learning to skate was a necessity. The project manager, who was recently married, travels to the Harbourfront Centre from his downtown condo every week, strapping on a pair of sharp, black hockey skates and donning a helmet to get some fresh air and exercise.
"Now that I live here in Canada and we have four months of winter I need to stay active. It is better than staying in my condo," he said. "If I have a family and kids, I would like to teach them how to skate."
Near the end of the class, Prabhakara returns to a bench to remove her skates, nursing her hand after taking another fall.
She suffered the wound, she says with a bright smile, while defending herself from a hard landing on the frozen ice.
With her husband and daughter standing nearby she unlaced her skates and proclaims her second class a success.
"It was really exciting for me because I didn't fall as many times as I did last week," she said. "More than anything, the best experience was that I was taught how to put my foot forward. It was really difficult."
Follow Matthew Coutts on Twitter at @mrcoutts.
