Rink rats, ice flooding, and Zambonis: Georgetown to Quebec City and beyond, 1952-2025
“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” William Faulkner
Part One
As a child growing up in Georgetown, Ontario, I was a wannabe rink rat.
But I was a more of a rink mouse really, without the requisite whiskers to belong to the local rink rat pack.
From the age of about 5 until our family moved to a new city in 1964, when I was 12 years old, I worshipped the rink rats, dudes with slicked back hair and ducktails, who scampered onto the ice between periods and at the end of games to clear and restore the ice.
I aspired to attend rink rat college and earn my whiskers and a rink rat diploma.
There was no Zamboni during my rink rat worship phase.
Georgetown’s Donnie Fendley, a former rink rat himself, has provided me with a detailed, first-hand account of pre-Zamboni history:
“Before the Zamboni, clearing the ice was a seven-man job: four scrappers, one board sweeper, and two flooders.
The scrappers had a three-foot scrapper shovel; we would, two to a side, clear the snow down to the pit area (remove the drop-in door and push the snow in, where hot water would melt it); the sweeper went all around the boards clearing the snow away so it did not build up; and there were two flooders (triangular tanks to hold water and two drop-downs at the back: heavy cloth and bars with nozzles). To flood in front of the net area, we would do a circle, then do a path the width of the drop-downs and do another circle in front of the other net and keep going up and down until the entire ice had a coat of water.
One of the scrappers would push the nets to one side, then put them back once the flooding was complete…
In those days you got a check mark for each function, also a check mark for each job you completed: clean set area, washroom, lobby etc. Then at the end of the week the check marks were totaled and we got 25 cents for each.”
From the perspective of a pint-sized, awestruck onlooker these valiant labourers were glorious heroes.
Part Two
By the time our first son was a pre-school tot in the early 1980s, he was a rabid hockey fan. Growing up in Quebec City, he lived in a hotbed of hockey frenzy where the local media blared news of the NHL Nordiques 24/7 in every bus, bar, or convenience store. In those days of yore, any news of the world announcing the zombie apocalypse would have been relegated to the back pages of the Journal de Quebec, giving way to the latest scores, prognoses, and scurrilous gossip about the Nords.
As theatre lovers, my wife and I tried to interest our freshly minted offspring in all things thespian, but to no avail. When his daycare put on skits for fawning parents, he chose to collect the tickets. Hockey was his passion. And he was especially keen on the fights.
At four years old, he began playing at the insect level, randomly called MAG in our community, and developed a well deserved reputation for being ”scrappy,” much to the chagrin of his peacenik parents, who frequently cringed with shame and blanched with trepidation over the course of his lengthy kid hockey career whenever he would receive a suspension for too many penalties or for fighting.
Now 44 years young, our hockey son has always been a honey badger, intrepid and pugnacious, no more so than on the ice.
Honey Badger (Ratel) | San Diego Zoo Animals & Plants
But his pre-competitive tyke hockey days provide my most cherished memories. Even before he began kindergarten, we would attend games at the old Colisée de Québec, both professional matches and pee wee tournament contests. The Honey Badger loved the games, but what he really longed for, working himself up to a state of effervescent excitement, was the between-period appearance of the Zamboni, the resurfacer for cleaning and smoothing the ice surface. Zamboni drivers were his heroes. His fervent goal was to take up Zamboni driving as a career.
When we watched games together on our rabbit-eared television in the mid 1980s, especially jousts between the Nordiques and the Canadiens during which vicious donnybrooks were the order of the day, our honey badger pined for the Zamboni between periods, expressing deep discontent with the garrulous talking heads, repetitive replays, and inane commercials that crowded out crucial Zamboni watching.
I fervently wish a Zamboni could erase all the accumulated ruts and snow of life’s trials and tribulations and that my son could relive that time of wonder and innocence, before his inevitable fall from grace, a fate that befalls us all.
“Zambonis quietly and efficiently turn beat-up ice into a beautiful, clean sheet before dumping the harvested snow on a mound outside the rink. Even those who aren’t skaters or hockey players like watching the ice resurfacing process. It’s satisfying to see, in a few minutes of swath-by-swath passes, something thoroughly damaged turned into something smooth, shiny and new. If only life were so easy.”-Mark Oshinskie
For more Zamboni and hockey images, please click here:
Ode to the Zamboni: in honour of the new hockey season – Robert McBryde
For images and stories about the old Georgetown arena, home of the rink rats, please click here:
Memorial Arena – THE GEORGETOWN VAULT
Your friend,
Robert
Robert McBryde – robertmcbrydeauthor.com
