Ice would not seem hard to come by in Fort Chipewyan, a tiny outpost on Lake Athabasca in northeastern Alberta. A small aboriginal community, it is accessible in winter only by a 100-mile road built from ice.As in most places in Canada, hockey is vital to Fort Chipewyan. An indoor rink is flooded with water and frozen, which requires temperatures around 5 degrees Fahrenheit. But when spring comes, the community is accessible only by boat or seaplane, the ice road melts away, and with it, so does the hockey season.
For a small community like Fort Chipewyan, population 1,007, a refrigeration system for a year-round ice rink has been too expensive. But early this month hockey became a year-round sport as this isolated town celebrated the opening of what manufacturers call the first full-size synthetic hockey rink in North America.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Tiny Canadian Town Can Play Hockey Year-Round With Synthetic Ice - NYTimes.com
Author: BRETT ZARDA
