Already an interesting start to the year, I was watching some show on TV and one of the A & W commercials came on where the burger guy was skating and asking questions. I recognized the area as the Rideau Canal and on one of my few trips to Ottawa I recall what an attraction it was. Later that week I went through Chestermere and noticed a skating area near the Restaurant on the East side, they had a bobcat on the ice clearing the area where people go out on the ice and play hockey, skate or a little of both. On the weekend I was doing one of my drive arounds to see how the County was doing on road maintenance and went down Boundary Road and noticed a bunch of people with snowboards and parachutes on Weed Lake, it looked like fun. I don’t think it was an organized thing they were just a bunch of people with the same idea. It got me thinking.
The next Friday I called one of my neighbors, Braden Szakaly, he has skidsteers and all kinds of equipment. I wanted to ask him about some of the challenges of snowplowing cul-de-sacs and get some sort of idea in case he could offer some advice I could pass along to the Public Works people. We looked at a few and talked about it a bit, I asked him if he had a few minutes to have a look at something else. We went North a couple of miles on 797 from the 4 way stop out to Township 240 and went East on the unimproved Road allowance, it is well frozen so it isn’t too bad for driving on. When you get to the end after about a mile you are at Weed Lake. Many people don’t realize just how big Weed Lake is, it is about 25% bigger than Chestermere Lake. I was telling Braden about Rideau Canal and the Bobcat I saw on Chestermere Lake, it was interesting putting all that together. We went to the Crossing for a Friday afternoon libation and ran into a few other people and started talking about possibilities over a cool one.
After some good conversation and a few laughs, it turned out that one of the other people in there, Dave Pickering has a snow plow, we started talking about what it would be like if there were a skating track and a few rinks on Weed Lake, would people use them? Well since safety is always priority one, the biggest question was “can you go out on the ice”, it is interesting how things come together, Justin piped up that he had an ice auger, an ice fishing thing, “it’s easy to check the thickness”, well after a little while longer and when we were leaving, we decided to meet at Tim’s for a coffee the next day and then see what the ice was like. To make a long story a little shorter, the ice is anywhere from a foot to 18 inches deep, fine for many tons of load and now there is a 3 km skating track and 2 nice rinks on Weed Lake. Hollywood Joe Ummels and I went out and got a video, he did an Academy Award winning edit and about 400 and some people indicated they liked the idea, at least on Facebook they liked it. By some standards that’s not a lot but by our standards in Langdon, it went viral.
So there is a nice skating track and a few rinks on Weed Lake, at the time of writing this we are just getting out of a -20 or so ridiculous cold snap but it is supposed to get warm for the weekend. If it becomes something people might use and get some recreation out of, fantastic. At a point there will need to become a more formalized organization but for now, I hope the “Langdon Ice Field and Track” gives people a little enjoyment. If you see Braden, Dave, Justin and Joe around let them know you like the Community Spirit, it’s alive and well in Langdon.
