Brian Lee
We happily took a week-long hit of nostalgia last month when lakes froze for the first time in decades. I’d forgotten how roaming a lake breathed fresh perspective on a familiar landscape or the bolt of adrenalin delivered when the ice cracks loudly beneath you. It was a rare winter rush that many thought was lost.
Though I’m quite young, even I can recall ice so thick that someone could drive a car onto Lily Lake. My dad recalls skating across Gerrans Bay when he was a kid. It was once common for the lakes to freeze so everyone had skates. We had a pile of old skates from the Bargain Barn which looked nothing like the custom gel-fitted things I see the fancy skaters wearing now. My parents liked to fabricate convenient lies and a particularly devastating one was that "a snug fit wasn’t important for ice skating." Apparently, a pair that fit within three or four shoes sizes was fine.
Our skates’ sloppy fit and soggy leather ensured the Lee kids shuffled like gimps on the ice and could expect ankle problems later in life. Around then my dad got a new pair of Bauers that looked like they were shot from the future. When my feet grew into them, I finally experienced what it felt like to skate without effort or pain. Suddenly I understood two things — skating was fun and you can’t trust your parents.
But we all know the rest of the story — the Albertans heated up the planet and all that fun went away. Until this year. Smail’s Pond on Francis Peninsula hadn’t been skated on since 1996. For others like Hotel Lake or Klein — which both saw skating action — it has likely been much longer.
During that long thaw, many families, like mine, rid themselves of their antique skating gear. I was able to find those old, dull Bauers and made as much use of them as my aging skills allowed. Many lucky enough to find skates — and anyone under the age of 20 or 25 — hadn’t skated on local lakes before.
So anyone with even a dull pair like mine was fortunate. Skate sales took off at Trail Bay Source for Sports in Sechelt. Owner Josh Romer says January sales of figure and hockey skates more than quadrupled from last year.
My skating skills were honed from rare winter freeze ups and anyone who witnessed me on the ice this year can testify that it wasn’t enough. When the lake froze, sometimes we’d get to stay home from school, "As long as you stay out on the ice." Trout Lake always froze first but Pender skaters are intimidated by people who live near arenas so we’d wait for our home ice to thicken.
The shallows of our dock would freeze first and we’d clear the reeds into a 12-foot skating rink. It was all we really needed — we couldn’t get far on our crappy skates anyways. But all too often, that’s all we’d get before a warming snowfall snuffed any hopes of real skating for that year. And it may take another 20 years before we skate again but my Dad’s old Bauers are freshly sharpened and stored away until they’re needed. Hopefully it’s next year.