A viral video that shows two hockey players being lowered to the ice on a drawbridge-style wooden staircase at a nearly century-old rink in a Saskatchewan village recently made a splash across much of the hockey world.
It’s the usual way for players to get to the ice from dressing rooms that are on the upper level of the building, above the lobby. It’s been that way since the arena was built in 1928 in Lang, a village of just fewer than 200 residents that’s about 70 kilometres south of Regina.
All the attention has caught the tiny community by surprise.
“That video getting 4 [million] or 5 million views across all those platforms was pretty unbelievable,” said Mike Williams, an arena board member.
“I understand the attention it gets for the nostalgic-ness of our Zamboni and our catwalk ... but this much attention, it’s pretty surreal.”
The “catwalk” Williams referred to is a staircase that’s lowered using a rope and pulley system. And while the video shows a player stumbling, he said the setup works quite well.
“I mean, I’ve been down those stairs thousands of times,” he said. “Usually we don’t have a problem.”
Among other unique touches is the homemade ice resurfacing machine, which is basically an old water barrel and mop setup. The rink is flooded using a fire hose.
Then, there are the dressing rooms—tiny by modern standards. Williams said they’re roughly eight feet wide and 15 feet long.
“They’re pretty tiny, but you have to remember, when that thing was built, guys weren’t really wearing much for hockey equipment, so they didn’t need much space to get dressed,” he said.
“There’s no running water or anything up there.”
Facility Relies on Volunteer Labour
The rink hosted its first event in January 1929; it’s been going ever since as a focal point for the community.
Like most rinks, it has a canteen and a small lobby. The site is operated by volunteers, who handle everything from booking ice time to doing repairs.
Williams said the facility is still well-used, despite its age.
Teams from nearby communities will rent ice time just to get some extra practice. Sometimes, when the nearby town of Milestone is hosting a hockey tournament, some of the games will be played in Lang.
That still leaves a lot of time for the local residents to use the ice—an aspect that Williams loves.
“It’s fantastic, as far as I’m concerned,“ he said. ”We get unlimited ice time. ... We can skate all day.”
And while it’s natural ice, Williams said the quality is usually quite good.
“We got natural hard ice, which is fun to carve up,“ he said. ”We spend thousands and thousands of hours there, me and my buddies. So it’s been pretty awesome for us over the last 30 years.”
But it all comes at a cost, and that’s where the volunteer labour comes in. A lot of people do a lot of work to keep the old arena going.
For example, when the volunteers were replacing the hockey boards, they found more problems.
“We went to do that, and upon ripping all the old ones off, we realized that the entire west wall was rotted out, so we had to reframe it,” Williams said.
“It just seems like every time we fix something, there’s always something next to be fixed. It seems like every time we knock two things off in summertime, three or more things pop up, so every dollar matters. All the hours are volunteers.”
As a result, he said, the rink has become something of a second home.
“Our wives give us a little heck because we seem to spend more time there sometimes in the summertime than we do at home,” he said.
Given all of that, the timing of the fundraiser couldn’t have been better.
“Here was the perfect time to launch the fundraiser we’ve been after for the last little while. Because we got a lot of upgrades that need to be done, because, well, it’s 95 years old,” Williams said.
Their goal is $25,000.
