I rolled into David Balfour Park in Toronto’s Rosedale neighbourhood on my OneWheel on Sept. 12, as longboarders kicked and pushed past me toward a field full of suits, ties and boards. About 100 people were scattered across the grass.
One was dressed head to toe like a cat.
I caught myself staring at the boards and how people had made them their own. Some were strapped with medic bags and Red Bull. Others were covered in stickers, signatures or custom designs. All of them looked well-loved.
“It’s skateboard Christmas, really,” said Alex Thompson, an organizer from Toronto’s Board Meeting.
The Toronto Board Meeting is an annual ride that brings skateboarders and other riders together to move through the city. Fellow organizer Soul Merasty says riders have travelled from Korea and the United States, while longtime participants return even after moving away. Behind the gathering are organizers planning routes, recruiting volunteers and stepping up to keep the tradition going.
It felt like I was entering a family reunion with relatives whose names I didn’t know but somehow felt comfortable introducing myself to them anyway.
Old friends greeted each other with tight hugs. New ones got fist bumps. A father skated while pushing a child in a stroller. In the half hour before the 4:20 p.m. ride, I was handed a beer, a bow tie and stickers, and invited to sign someone’s board.
I had followed the Toronto Board Meeting online since the pandemic but had never attended. After years of riding with smaller e-rider groups, I expected something similarly loose: people hanging around until someone eventually pointed everyone in a direction.
Instead, Thompson stood with a megaphone announcing the route. Volunteer skate medics waited in red armbands; experienced riders marshalled intersections and a cyclist carried a speaker loud enough to hear from an intersection away. At one point, I watched someone hand water to a stranger who looked exhausted.
It was organized, just not in the way the city would organize a marathon.
The Board Meeting began in 2003, according to a 2012 account published by Toronto Grand Prix Tourist, when longboarder and photographer Benjamin Jordan was completing a community leadership assignment that required him to give something back to a community he identified with.
Already riding with Toronto’s Metro Longboarders, Jordan gathered riders to travel through the city together, asking them to wear white shirts and ties as part of the “Board Meeting” joke.
And more than two decades later, nobody formally handed the event to Thompson.
“It just needed someone to do it, and I took over,” he said.
That apparent informality still takes work. Thompson said the Board Meeting has expanded into a week of skate events, while organizers plan routes, decide who can safely lead riders down hills and manage media throughout the year.
Pipe O’Neal, attending his 15th Board Meeting, said the event has survived because participants put it on for themselves and others who share their love of skating. He worried that becoming corporate or sanctioned could mean fulfilling expectations that limit creativity and change what people loved about it in the first place.
What keeps him coming back is simple.
“It’s the love for the community, the adrenaline of skating down a big hill with so many people, you feel unstoppable,” said O’Neal.
O’Neal said he met some of his best friends through the Board Meeting.
Kai Xie, who helps run Toronto community group Happy Town, travelled from Markham for his first Board Meeting after seeing clips on Instagram. His Exway Atlas electric skateboard, which he calls Sally, has become a way of getting himself out of the house.
He said Sally gets him away from his computer screen in his home and out into the world.
But the freedom of the Board Meeting also comes with risk.
Early in the ride, I watched a skateboarder end up directly in front of a car, her board slipping near its front wheel. Later, riders approached a steep stretch of Avenue Road with opposing traffic moving beside us. Organizers warned riders about the hill and encouraged those without helmets to walk.
I had expected people to show up and ride. Along the way, I noticed the work that made that possible: medics in red armbands, riders marshalling intersections and someone making sure we knew what was ahead.
By the end of the ride, I was moving with everyone else, surrounded by people kicking, pushing, bailing, recovering and rolling on.
“We do this for ourselves and the people that share the same love of skateboarding, community and well-being,” O’Neal says.
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Author’s note: Pipe O’Neal credited Escarpment Surfers, Skate Invaders and Team Ontario with helping keep the Board Meeting alive, providing experience, knowledge and guidance that support riders and keep the tradition going.
For another look at the event, I recommend Andre Arevalo’s beautifully made documentary, Lucky 13: The 13th Toronto Board Meeting.
