Source::AP
KINGMAN, Alberta
Larry Asp grew up playing shinny outside in this tiny rural town he calls home again after 40 years away. Since returning, he also holds the keys to the outdoor “Rink of Dreams” that gives the 90 local residents the chance to skate outside during the keen Canadian winters.
Out here on the prairie an hour’s drive southeast of Edmonton, the ice in the former “Lutefisk Capital of Alberta” doesn’t seem to freeze as long as it used to, not like when Asp was a kid. He unlocked the doors to the rink, which in late September was simply dirt after a summer of hosting barrel racing and other equestrian events, and gazed into the wind-swept distance.“We’re kind of at the mercy of the elements,” said Asp, a retired member of the Kingman Recreation Association board. “In the springtime because of the (rink’s) white boards and the sun, it starts melting back from the boards pretty quickly. You’d be really lucky if you got four months out of it.”
After a warm fall, the rink was back to being a rink again by mid-December and the skating — and the hockey — had begun. Two hours to the southwest in the Town of Sylvan Lake, the skating surface on the 544-acre namesake body of water opened Dec. 19 this year for activities that last until the melting begins, usually in mid-March.
Pond hockey has been a tradition for generations in places like Kingman and Sylvan Lake, across Canada, parts of the U.S. and cold environments around the world. Yet winter sports are, as Asp notes, at the mercy of the elements.
Experts say climate change is making for shorter, freezing winters and poses a threat to the very existence of the outdoor stick and puck games at the root of hockey.
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