Canada's game: it's hockey time in nation's backyard rinks

FREDERICTON -- While most were dreaming of a white Christmas, Robert Morimanno just wanted a frozen one.

For the past four years, Morimanno has laid down plastic sheeting in his downtown Fredericton backyard to make, what in plus-temperatures, looks like a giant waterbed framed by timbers purchased from the local hardware store.

It's just part of winter life for Morimanno, whose backyard-rink projects are a real passion.

"My dad would do the old-fashioned 'stomp on the snow and pour water on it' when I was growing up in the 1970s," Morimanno said. "The problem with that was the first thaw, and it all disappears."

For Morimanno, and New Brunswickers from all corners of the province, winter is about perfecting the art of the backyard rink.

He has gone as far as dismantling part of a fence which runs the perimeter of his yard to truck in soil to level his lawn so that when it's cold outside it's Maple Leaf Gardens in the backyard for his two boys - Caleb, 11, and Pascal, 7.

Morimanno has even rigged up his own version of the Zamboni to resurface his rink. It involves a broom and a hose with several holes in it to distribute water evenly to the sweeper's bristles.

"I call it the Zambo-rimanno," he said. "Over the years you pick up some ideas."

In this country of 34 million people, there are one half-million registered hockey players, according to Hockey Canada.

There are roughly 2,500 indoor rinks, plus 11,000 outdoor rinks and "countless" backyard rinks.

By contrast, the United States has a combined 2,000.

New Brunswick is known worldwide for its outdoor hockey each winter at the World Pond Hockey Championship in Plaster Rock.

According to Environment Canada climatologist David Phillips, while winters are getting warmer everywhere, Atlantic Canada has seen little change in its "ice-making index."

"There's a little bit of folklore that is very much true to New Brunswick," Phillips said. "As the days lengthen - meaning more daylight after the first day of winter - the cold strengthens."

From the 1940s to the present, the prairie provinces have seen their average temperature increase by 3.2 C. In southern Ontario, the global warming effect has added 1.3 C to the average temperature.

In Atlantic Canada, the difference - seven decades later - is just 0.5 C.

"The thinking is that the melting of the ice in the North is keeping the Atlantic waters cooler than it would be," Phillips said. "It's slowing the warming down."

In the past decade, Moncton averaged 72 days when the temperature stayed below the freezing mark, down from 80 days in the 1950s and '60s, according to Phillips. Go a little bit farther north and that ice making index climbs to 74 days in Miramichi, down from 83 days five decades ago.

"If warming continues the way we think it will, you won't be raising Bobby Orrs or Wayne Gretzkys in the backyard," Phillips said. "But it will be something that is there for a little while longer.

"There's still time."

Across town from the Morimanno rink is Adam Wilson's ice sheet, which began when a low-lying part of his yard pooled with water.

"I had a drain pipe put in to drain the water out of that area when I realized, 'Hey, this is a perfect spot for a rink,'" Wilson said. "So I plugged the pipe and had more water than I wanted."

The rink naturally floods from the rain in the fall.

"And then I just perfect it with the garden hose," he said.

Wilson has collected wood pallets from across the city to construct boards that enclose the perimeter of the rink, which is indisputably the largest backyard ice surface in the city. It measures 105 feet by 50 feet. An NHL-calibre rink measures 200 feet by 85 feet.

"We always flood with hot water, and that might seem like a crazy approach with a surface as large as mine, but we actually use a lot less water that way," Wilson said, adding that the hot water melts away imperfections in the ice quickly and freezes as smooth as glass.

"But I have come in on a few cold nights nearly frozen to death and with no hot water left to get a warm shower."

Over the past six years, Wilson has added three spotlights, nets above the boards at each end to keep the puck in play, and a warming room beside the ice for breaks.

"The whole family gets out there and the whole neighbourhood can enjoy it," Wilson said, adding both his son and daughter enjoy the ice. "That being said, the time we spend using it is far less than the time we spend maintaining it.

"Some people probably think we're crazy, but it's worth it. I do it for the joy of my kids."

Chris Kane, a backyard rink maker in Beresford, north of Bathurst, N.B., started an online blog to share his rink-building strategy, complete with weather charts and commentary from season to season.

A quote on Kane's blog states: "Pond hockey: Short of getting Gordon Lightfoot to write a song about Stompin' Tom Connors singing a song about Anne Murray, you just can't get any more Canadian."

Said Kane, who has been making ice in the backyard since 2005 for his son and two daughters: "You're out there in the freezing cold pouring water, you think about your experiences, and I thought it would be fun to put that out there."

"It was my father's idea to make the rink.

"I grew up outside of Saint John in Titusville and my father built a rink for me and my brother every year, so one year he said that I should build a rink of my own and that started it."

For Don Belliveau of Dieppe, N.B., it's the end of an era.

"My kids are older, so I have retired this year," he said. "I haven't given the boards away or anything like that yet, but I have been doing it for 18 years so it's hard not to do it."

Belliveau is a past winner of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League Moncton Wildcats' rink-building competition for an ice surface complete with painted blue lines, goaltender creases and centre ice faceoff dot.

A lucky loonie was also always buried at centre ice following an Edmonton icemaker who began the Canadian tradition at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

"It was always just the thrill of having your own rink to skate on whenever you wanted," Belliveau said. "You pray for the weather to hold up so the kids can have a nice long season."

Back in Fredericton, Morimanno's 20-by-20-foot construct has grown to 44-by-21 in the past few years.

"It's a good size rink," Morimanno said. "The only issue is that if we do play a game we use the soft rubber puck.

"I have a picture window and one year I did rifle a shot that was about a foot below the window and my wife saw me shoot it. So now we use the soft rubber puck."

He has four spotlights on the rink for flooding the ice when the kids are in bed.

"I guess I'm a bit fanatical," Morimanno said. "But it's for the kids, so it's worth every hour put in."

? Copyright (c) New Brunswick Telegraph Journal

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