Shut out of Shinny: Outdoor rinks feel the heat (Montreal Gazette)
From the Montreal Gazette:
Warm weather is wreaking havoc with outdoor hockey. Are the days of shinny in fresh air really over, or is this unseasonable winter just a one-off freak of nature?
by JOHN MEAGHER, The Gazette
Published: Saturday, January 13, 2007
Planet Earth is running a fever this winter and in many parts of Canada the symptoms are as plentiful as they are troubling.
An ancient ice shelf the size of Manhattan breaks off Ellesmere Island in the high Arctic; ice fishermen in Quebec are bobbing for apples; the Rideau Canal in Ottawa will probably be open for boating only this Winterlude and some pond-hockey tournaments across the Great White North are skating on thin ice.
In Montreal, the tell-tale sign the world we knew is off its melting axis is when little Johnny can't play outdoor shinny again today, Jan. 13, which also happens to be Hockey Day in Canada.
Given the warming trends and slushy weather, could the backyard rink be going the way of the cod?
"It's certainly getting tougher to have a backyard rink with the weather being so goofy now," said Gaston Gingras, a former National Hockey League defenceman who won a Stanley Cup with the Canadiens in 1986.
"I tried a few years ago to get my own backyard rink going, but it died. You have to work on it every day because of the fluctuations in the weather."
Gingras often tours the province with the NHL Legends team or to hold youth hockey clinics.
"I was just in Sherbrooke, the Beauce and Quebec City, and there's no ice anywhere," he said. "I was up in James Bay in October and it was the same thing. The elders up there told me they've never seen anything like it before."
Across Montreal, rink boards stand idle like relics of winters past.
For the cmpolete article, see: http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=23689397
Warm weather is wreaking havoc with outdoor hockey. Are the days of shinny in fresh air really over, or is this unseasonable winter just a one-off freak of nature?
by JOHN MEAGHER, The Gazette
Published: Saturday, January 13, 2007
Planet Earth is running a fever this winter and in many parts of Canada the symptoms are as plentiful as they are troubling.
An ancient ice shelf the size of Manhattan breaks off Ellesmere Island in the high Arctic; ice fishermen in Quebec are bobbing for apples; the Rideau Canal in Ottawa will probably be open for boating only this Winterlude and some pond-hockey tournaments across the Great White North are skating on thin ice.
In Montreal, the tell-tale sign the world we knew is off its melting axis is when little Johnny can't play outdoor shinny again today, Jan. 13, which also happens to be Hockey Day in Canada.
Given the warming trends and slushy weather, could the backyard rink be going the way of the cod?
"It's certainly getting tougher to have a backyard rink with the weather being so goofy now," said Gaston Gingras, a former National Hockey League defenceman who won a Stanley Cup with the Canadiens in 1986.
"I tried a few years ago to get my own backyard rink going, but it died. You have to work on it every day because of the fluctuations in the weather."
Gingras often tours the province with the NHL Legends team or to hold youth hockey clinics.
"I was just in Sherbrooke, the Beauce and Quebec City, and there's no ice anywhere," he said. "I was up in James Bay in October and it was the same thing. The elders up there told me they've never seen anything like it before."
Across Montreal, rink boards stand idle like relics of winters past.
For the cmpolete article, see: http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=23689397
posted by eric model | 10:15 AM
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