The Jasper Arena is ready for ice, as soon as … you know

COVID has brought team sports to a halt, but over at the Jasper Activity Centre, the break in action has given contractors and staff the opportunity to complete a suite of improvements to the arena and curling rink.

Wayne Hansen, senior superintendent from Prologic Construction Ltd., had been in Jasper since the summer. On January 7, Hansen bid farewell to the municipal staff, local contractors and other Jasper residents he’d come to get to know in seven months on the job.

“I feel like I met everyone in town,” he laughed.

Even the site itself gave Hansen a feel for the living history of Jasper. After subcontractors tore up the arena’s old cement slab, they drilled down beneath the sand and gravel to find a layer of organic material—dirt and straw, decades old, possibly remnants from when pioneer Jasper outfitters Tom McCready and Tom Vinson had horse stables in the area. Parks Canada had horse barns nearby too, before the rink was built in 1960, so the straw could have come from there, but either way, the organics had to go.

“Otherwise it settles out and affects the slab,” Hansen said.

The 200 x 85-foot slab, poured by Reward Construction (the same concrete specialists who did Rogers Place Arena in Edmonton), is now ready for ice. Laser-levelled to within 2.5 mm, known stickler-for-details, Peter Bridge, was thoroughly impressed.

“I’m itchin’ to make the ice on it,” Jasper’s arena manager said. 

No longer will Bridge have to make multiple sheets of ice to compensate for the high and low spots of the old cement slab, which, after 28 years, was not only showing its age but posing a potential safety hazard. Same idea for the boards, which have been replaced with flexible dashers that provide injury-preventing “give,” and which have been built four inches higher than the previous version. Since these new ones aren’t made of plywood, they won’t rot out.

“I was having trouble keeping screws in them,” Bridge admitted.

Eventually, when hockey is permitted again, spectators will notice that the glass is higher, making the rink better at keeping pucks contained to the ice surface…and to help keep crazed hockey parents better contained to the seating area (yes, that’s a thing). Fans will also notice the not-so-scalding temperatures coming out of the overhead heaters, thanks to the new, more efficient aluminum tubes Jasperite Gary Hilworth and his crew installed.

What the public won’t see, however,  is the heating and cooling system underneath the skating surface, nor will they notice the safer refrigeration system which uses less ammonia than the previous one. The next phase of the arena upgrade is to install a new ice rink compressor and relocate the room which houses it.