Mulock Park's First Winter Starts Indoors: What's Open at Mulock House Before the Woodland Loop Freezes
October 29, 2026
October 29, 2026
Mulock Park opened on September 18. It sits at the northwest corner of Yonge Street and Mulock Drive. It had six weeks of fall colour on the Great Lawn. In December it becomes a skating park. November falls between those two seasons. The Woodland Loop is half barricaded, the trees are bare, and the Town lists the skate season as December to March.
So for this first winter, Mulock Park is really Mulock House. The restored house at the centre of the property keeps the longest indoor hours in the park. It has a free gallery of AGO collection works upstairs, a café on the main floor, and a speakeasy-style bar that hosts ticketed game nights. If you've only used the park as a walking loop, the house is the part worth getting to know this November.
The Woodland Loop is a 340-metre refrigerated skate trail, and it's the feature most people have been waiting for. According to the Town's Mulock Park page, finishing work on the loop runs from Tuesday, October 13 to mid-November. Portions of the skate and walking trail are closed, and temporary barricades and signs direct people around them.
After that the trail has a gap before skating starts. The Town's amenity hours table lists the Woodland Loop as a skate trail from December to March, weather permitting, open 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day. The Town hasn't announced an opening day. Two details to know before you plan your first skate: skating is free, and skate rentals are not available on site. If your skates are in a basement bin somewhere, November is a good time to dig them out.
Until then, the paths that matter most in late fall are the ones leading to the house.
The Town lists Mulock House and the AGO gallery as open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday to Friday and 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Those hours don't change with the season in the Town's table.
Chickadee Café's hours do change. The café is inside Mulock House and is run independently by local company A Million Mouthfuls Catering. The two published versions of its winter hours don't match:
The Town's own note says café hours are subject to change and points readers to the operator. Check chickadeecafe.ca before you go.
Under either schedule, the house stays open for two to three hours after the coffee stops on a winter weeknight. If you finish work at 6 and want somewhere warm, quiet and free within walking distance of Yonge, the gallery upstairs is still open.
The café's menu online is split into breakfast, lunch and grab-and-go. Before it opened, York Region reported that the plan included a daily grilled cheese, evening shareables, gluten-free and vegan options, and a kids' menu. The café had a short reset soon after opening. It closed temporarily from September 21 to settle in, and the Town confirmed it was open again for Thanksgiving weekend.
The second floor is where Mulock House feels different from any other civic building in town. The Art Gallery of Ontario runs a 2,000-square-foot gallery there with works from its Indigenous and Canadian collections, and admission is free.
The opening exhibition is Shaped by Her Hands, with 28 works by 10 artists. In its press release, the AGO says the show stays up until spring 2027. The release names Kenojuak Ashevak, Rosalie Favell, Frances Loring, Lucy Tasseor Tutsweetok, Elizabeth Wyn Wood and Florence Wyle among the artists.
That end date matters for the season. The show will be on display for all of the skating season, so you can pair a December skate with a visit upstairs without worrying it will have changed. And since you don't need a ticket, you can drop in for twenty minutes on a cold Tuesday and come back another time.
The third indoor space is the one most park visitors haven't seen. The Town describes the M Bar at Mulock House as an indoor space available by permit or program. When the park opened, the Town called it a speakeasy-style bar.
The first scheduled programming there is from Secret City. The Town's park page still lists its "Parlour Games" as coming soon, but Secret City's own Blood on the Clocktower page already shows dates at Mulock House:
It's a social-deduction game for six to ten players, ages 16 and up, and it runs about two and a half hours. The December 3 session lands right around when the Woodland Loop is scheduled to begin its season, so you could skate before the game and still make the 7 p.m. start.
The Town's program and events page says registered programs, including art workshops and immersive experiences, will start this fall, and asks visitors to check back for details.
The bare trees make the outdoor art easier to find, and all of it is close enough to the house for a loop that ends at the café. The Town's public art page lists seven works, all from 2026:
General park hours are 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. That leaves time for an early walk past the sculptures before the house opens at 7 on weekdays.
The address is 33 Mulock Drive. York Region Transit and Viva serve the main entrance, and multi-use paths connect to the park. The Town says parking at Mulock Park is free, and it lists three places to leave a car:
If you're coming from the south on Yonge, the turn into the big lot takes some planning, because it only works from the southbound lanes. On a short weekday trip to the café, the Mulock Drive lot is the easier stop.
The spending shows how much the Town put into the building. As reported by York Region, main park construction cost $64.2 million, the Mulock House renovation $14.3 million, and the Yonge Street lot and connecting paths $3.2 million. That comes to $81.7 million before land purchase and financing costs. NewmarketToday reported on September 29 that final contract closeout wasn't finished and that the Town expected to release a financial report at year end.
At the ribbon-cutting, Mayor John Taylor framed the project around what it does for the community. In the Town of Newmarket's opening release, he said:
"I believe this park will set a new standard in the GTA for community building."
The Woodland Loop shows that ambition in December. In November it shows indoors, in a house that opens at 7 a.m., has free art upstairs and holds game nights in a former private estate. When the trail does open, the two will work together. The house closes at 8 p.m. on weeknights and the trail stays open until 10, so a winter evening can start indoors and finish on the ice.
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