Ice-making course in August creates new opportunities for Canada’s ice technicians

There’s electricity in the air. Tension can be cut with a knife. All eyes are on the world’s best curlers as they prepare to slide over pebbled ice in preparation for a gold-medal game.

What isn’t seen is the work behind the scenes to create perfect ice conditions for a championship final. An icemaker’s process is the tip of an iceberg of knowledge submerged in years of practice, experimentation and repetition. 

Don Powell has assigned this gold-medal game scenario to 25 ice technicians on a hot August summer’s day at the Albert McCormick Community Centre in Waterloo, Ont. Each team of ice techs has 30 minutes to prep a sheet of ice for a championship game and provide conditions curlers expect when stepping onto the ice for the biggest game of their careers. This assessment wraps up a five-day competition ice-making course and is the next step toward these ice techs becoming Certified Competition Ice Technicians. 

“This program is designed to help ice techs learn these important skills. It takes them through the next step of preparing ice for major events. We simulate the experience of what it’s like to install and maintain ice at big-deal competitions like the Scotties, the Brier, or a Canadian seniors or U-20 championship,” said Powell, the head facilitator of the course and Curling Canada’s Ice Technician Certification Manager.

These students in Waterloo have years of experience making and maintaining ice at curling facilities, but installing ice in an arena is different. The opportunities don’t come often, which is why Curling Canada has offered this course regularly for nearly 30 years. With only so many national or international events occurring every year, opportunities to learn how to install arena ice are limited. Ice techs can volunteer at these championships but seldom have the chance to paint circles or install decals. 

For assistant facilitator Rebecca Duck, these opportunities to practise are of incredible value.

“A lot of clubs have vinyl circles, so ice techs can lose the aspect of painting. Others have painted concrete floors so they don’t get to paint white and have never used a boom. There are a lot of clubs where they don’t have the ability to use some of this equipment at the course,” Duck said, who led the course with Powell, and fellow assistant facilitators Tom Leonard and Neil Gargul.

Ice techs travelled from across the country – British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Nova Scotia – to become certified, which opens new opportunities to be ice technicians at other events, including provincial and territorial championships. The program’s goal is simple: teach ice techs to install and maintain consistent, high-quality competition ice, which leads to consistent, high-quality competitive curlers.

Darren Moulding knows a thing or two about high-pressure gold-medal games. The 2021 Canadian men’s champion has competed in four Montana’s Brier gold-medal games. As an icemaker with 28 years of experience, he also knows what it takes to create the ice conditions required for those big games. Moulding was one of the 25 ice techs in Waterloo seeking certification. It’s the next step in his path to developing his career as an ice technician since retiring from competitive curling.

“I’ve always been very serious about icemaking. I’ve always said I’m a better icemaker than a curler,” Moulding said. 

With this certification, Moulding will be the chief ice technician at the Boston Pizza Cup, Curling Alberta’s provincial men’s curling championship. He will also start teaching icemaking courses in Alberta. Even after decades of experience making ice, Moulding left the clinic with some newfound knowledge about the skillset involved in preparing arena ice for an event. It often goes unnoticed but is crucial for an event’s success.

“Painting, stringing, putting carpet in, bunting and a lot of front-end installation. I’m experienced when it comes to once the last flood is done and the curling has started – when the scraper is on the ice – but I’m taking a lot of the front-end installation, plant knowledge and other little tips with me,” said Moulding, who also manages the ice at three curling facilities — Red Deer, Bentley and Rimbey — in Alberta.

Every icemaker left with new tools in their toolbelts, from learning new techniques to provide optimal speed and curl based on environmental conditions to managing the influence of spectators, television crews and weather on the ice conditions. While the course content was specific to arena ice, Sarah Willits still learned plenty to take back to the Richmond Curling Club, south of Ottawa.

“Some factors apply to competition ice that we don’t have at our little curling club. But the ice is the same, and so are the scrape patterns, figuring out the highs and lows of the ice and pebbling size based on temperatures. Those things don’t change whether you’re in an arena or a curling facility,” Willits said, an icemaker with 10 years of experience.

Willits volunteered at a national championship before but never had the experience of installing competition ice from pillar to post. She left the course more confident in making ice and looks forward to further perfecting the craft this season. The process of making ice is one part science, one part artistry, and one part experimentation.

“Learning everything over five days was great, but it takes a lot of repetition and practice to become a pro at this,” she said.

The course also provided opportunities for ice technicians to share ideas and troubleshoot based on their collective successes and challenges in their facilities. Those involved in the course are just a slice of the larger community willing to help each other out to provide the best possible ice conditions for recreational and high-performance curlers.

“It’s a great community with people from all different backgrounds,” Willits said. “We have a huge range of ages and different degrees of knowledge. Everybody wants to work together to improve.”

Willits was one of three women participating in the course as a student, and Duck was one of the assistant facilitators. They’re a small slice of women involved in icemaking who are proud of their representation in the industry.

“I’m a firm believer that if you can do the job, then you can do the job. We know that anyone can do this kind of work. So it’s nice to see more women involved in this and other girls learning it. They’re showing they can do the job and they can do it well,” said Duck, who has served as a deputy ice technician at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts and is leading the way for other women to be involved. 

Willits first got interested in icemaking as a volunteer at her facility, which paved the way for new opportunities and experiences. There are many opportunities across the country for other women to get involved.

“It is definitely a male-dominated industry. But any woman who wants to be in this industry can be and our arms are wide open,” Willits said. “Everyone needs help in the club, and people need employees or volunteers to work with them. That’s how I learned. I started with pebbling and gained knowledge as I progressed.”

Whether it’s one of the women proud of their representation and visibility in the icemaking community or a world-class curler who now has similar pursuits as an ice technician, everyone benefitted in some manner during the course. They weren’t the only ones. The group’s ice is now being used at the Trillium Curling Camp, a premiere summer curling camp for youth in Ontario. 

“I think I enjoy it more than I enjoy curling,” Moulding said of the icemaking process. “It’s a lot of work, but I find it more fun sometimes – to be on the ice working instead of having an off day. I’m a pretty lucky guy that I get to do that every day for a living.”