It’s not easy being an outdoor rink attend-ant in a period when our climate seems to be changing with each passing year.
It’s been three years since there have been any outdoor rinks operating with any consistency in the nation’s capital and that includes the Rideau Canal which remained closed for the entirety of the 2022-2023 skating season and all but 10 days last year.
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| Rink attendant Ray Levesque floods the ice pad at the Queeswood Heights Community Centre last week. FRED SHERWIN PHOTO |
Rink attendants had been working tire-lessly across the east end to try and get the outdoor rinks ready for the Christmas break, only to see their hard work melt away during the pre-New Year’s Eve thaw.
Fortunately the frigid temperatures return-ed on Jan. 3 and the rink attendants in Convent Glen, Chapel Hill North and South, Blackburn Hamlet, Beacon Hill, Avalon. Fallingbrook and Queenswood Heights were back at it again, flooding the ice surfaces and repairing the rink base where necessary.
Some, which already had a solid base, were able to bounce back quickly, while others such as the rink at Kinsella Park in Queenswood Heights which had melted down to the grass, will take much more time.
Fortunately, the weather has been co-operating for the past week and will likely continue to cooperate for the remainder of the month. How long it will last is anybody’s guess. Judging from the past several winters, it’s only a matter of time before we experience another thaw, and the rink attendants like Ray Levesque, who looks after the ice pad at the Queenswood Heights Community Centre, will be at it again.
Ray has been flooding the ice pad at least once a day since New Year’s with the help of his wife Kim.
Like his fellow rink attendants, Ray can only flood the pad in the morning or late at night when it’s not being used. And while frigid temperatures are an outdoor rink’s best friend, it means that the rink attendants must work at equally cold temperatures.
Even though they all get paid a stipend by the City of Ottawa, it’s often less than the minimum wage when taking into account the number of hours they work. So for most, it’s a labour of love and a way of giving back to their community.
“No one is doing it for the money,” says Queenswood Heights Community Association president Denis Vaillancourt. “Sometimes they’re flooding these rinks at 6:30 in the morning, or 11:30 at night so that kids can skate on it during the day.”
You can find an interactive map listing all of the outdoor rinks in the east end by searching “outdoor rinks in Ottawa” in your web browser.
The various community associations in the east end also post information on their Facebook pages on when the rinks are open or closed. They also post warnings for skaters to stay off the rinks for several hours after they’ve been flooded, in order to allow the flooding to fully freeze.
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