Jack Hanna
This past winter, master ice-maker Sean Oderkirk had to be even more devoted.
The temperature was so up and down. Whenever there was nose-tingling cold, Oderkirk laboured relentlessly at Jack Purcell Park, flooding the outdoor hockey rink – up to five times a day.
“You jump the first chance you get,” he says. “If it gets to minus three at one in the morning, I’ll run out and get something done.”
It can be exhausting. “There are days I’m at my physical limit.”
Oderkirk, 37, has been building ice since he was a teenager, when he and a friend maintained the outdoor rink near his childhood home in the west of Ottawa.
This past winter was the worst ice-making season in memory. It began with false starts.
Oderkirk first tried to make base ice on the Jack Purcell rink, between Elgin and Metcalfe Streets, on December 7. There had been a snowfall. Snow is essential to make the rink’s base.
The first step is to pack the snow, which Oderkirk does by driving his car around and around the rink. But the car’s tires cannot reach the very edges beside the boards. There Oderkirk tamps the snow with his boots.
Then he uses a shovel to carefully smooth the entire surface of the rink’s base, taking off any knobs or high bits. “Time spent smoothing the base will pay you back in time saved later five-fold.”
Next comes a light misting of water to firm the base. Once that is frozen, there will be a dozen floodings, using a fire hose that shoots out a big but gentle cone of spray.
If all goes well, the ice opens for skaters.
But this winter, the first attempt stalled.
“It melted down to the grass before Christmas.”
In early January, Oderkirk even tried an unorthodox technique, flooding directly onto grass. But that, too, ended in disappointment. “There was another melt.”
He finally opened the rink for skaters January 12, “the latest opening I can remember.”
Opening early is a point of pride. Every ice-maker wants their rink to be the first to open in the city.
“It is a contest,” Oderkirk chuckles. “I’m one of the earliest most of the time.”
When the rink is open, it needs daily care. The ice is scraped and flooded each evening starting around 10 p.m. – or later if there is late-night shinny under the rink lights.
If snow comes down, it has to be removed.
If the snowfall is light, Oderkirk laces up his skates. He pushes a scraper shovel to shove the snow into piles beside the boards. Then he uses a snowblower (which he purchased out of his own pocket) to blow the mounded snow over the boards.
When the snowfall is heavy, he uses the snowblower over the entire rink.
That can get exciting; the snow might conceal a puck left on the ice.
“If the snowblower inhales a puck, everything explodes,” Oderkirk says. That means all three belts on the snowblower snap and must be replaced. “You need to be comfortable changing belts.”
Save for a small honorarium, ice-making is volunteer work.
Oderkirk plays beer-league hockey several nights a week. Between that and ice maintenance, he has little time to join the shinny on the outdoor ice. But that’s okay.
“I just want to see ice being used,” he says. “There is something special about an outdoor rink.”