Take fire, add ice, make community magic

Looking for some way to spend Family Day in your community? Might I suggest that you mix fire and ice together. Not literally, of course.

The Fire and Ice Festival returns on Monday for an afternoon of action-packed fun and adventure at Lacombe Lake Park. The estimated size of the sure-to-be smiling and spirited crowd is well beyond the usual number of people taking a walk through the park.

“In years past, we’ve estimated around the 3,000 mark,” stated Bryan Mroz, firefighter and public relations person for the event. The St. Albert Firefighters have been organizing the event for the last few years.

Being in charge means that he doesn’t generally get to enjoy the day as much as everybody else does.

“In years past, no, but I’m hoping that this year it might be the first chance,” he laughed, suggesting that the fire performers with Fable Arts and the ice carvers are the first things that he would check out. He gave high praise to ice sculptor Barry Collier with local company Ice Works for the excellent quality work that he always offers for this event.

Those fire performers will be captivating the audiences with shows at 2 and 3 p.m.

Mroz is also keen on playing pond hockey alongside his comrades but reminded all other players from the public to make sure that they bring their own sticks if they want to get on the rink.

If not, there’s always the ever-popular obstacle course.

“It’s our biggest draw. It has our biggest lineups too,” he noted. “A lot of work went into that. One individual, Tyler Appleyard, who’s also co-running the festival this year, he puts all his effort into designing it. He hand-built everything. He’s a carpenter by trade.”

Other highlights of the festival include the fire hose tug of war, skating, horse-drawn sleigh rides (courtesy of MP Stables), the cabane Ĺ• sucre (thanks to ACFA RĂ©gional de Centralta), fire trucks, fire pits, and hot chocolate, coffee, free hot dogs and goodies.

The firefighters originally took on the organization as a request from the city. It’s no small secret that the team is one of the biggest forces of community service around, so when the call came to give back to the city one more time, they never hesitated to step up to the plate, err… snowbank.

“We have the manpower to do that kind of thing. It was our chance to give back to the community.”

It’s only a four-hour event but those are four action-packed hours, he exclaimed.

As it is expected that there will be at least a few thousand people in attendance, there will be no parking at the park during the event. The city is instead offering free park and ride service from the St. Albert Centre Exchange. These buses will start at 11:50 a.m. and run every 10 minutes until 4:10 p.m. The last bus departs Lacombe Lake Park at 4:38 p.m. Dogs are permitted on the bus where space allows.

Members of the public are also reminded that dogs must be on-leash at all times at the park.

People can visit www.stalbert.ca/exp/fire-and-ice for full details.

In keeping with the firefighters’ annual campaign to raise money to fight neuromuscular disorders through the Muscular Dystrophy Association of Canada, people can make donations ‘into the boot’. The boot drive started on the weekend with the firefighters offering an actual firefighter’s boot as a donation box at the Inglewood Safeway.

The public responded with a tally of approximately $6,000, enough to set the team well on their way to their goal of $25,000 by the time they conclude their three-day rooftop campout on March 1. An online auction is also available for people to make bids on. That can be found at www.stalbertfirefighters.com. That auction ends on March 10. A cadre of firefighters will also take on the roles of servers at East Side Mario’s on Thursday from 6 to 9 p.m. All of the tips that they earn that evening will go toward the cause.