A popular ice castle is back, and it is bigger and better than ever before.

Last year, David Robinson built a massive eight-foot-tall, 40-foot-wide ice structure on his Algonquin Avenue lawn. This year, he says, it has grown to 75-feet long and 10 feet tall.

"The castle looks much better at night when it is all light up," Robinson says, telling people to expect the return of another sculpture. "The ice Christmas tree is starting off at almost 70 inches wide at the base, and it should end up being about nine feet tall."

Last year's popularity concerned Robinson. He was worried about how the traffic was affecting his neighbours, but all summer long they were encouraging him, asking if the wall would pop back up. With the ability to have people over this winter, Robinson's sons and grandkids pitched in to create the massive wall.

"It is somewhere around 900 blocks because we used some totes and some other containers for making different shapes of ice."

A yellow Winnipeg Harvest tub is back outside the structure. At the tail end of last season, Robinson put out a bin and collected more than 300 lbs of food. This year, he expects that to grow.

"We empty that bin several times per day."

Robinson has been working on this wall well-before ice was staying frozen. In October, he reused his pool's water after he drained it for the season, pouring them into buckets, tubs, and more. once it froze, one of Robinson's sons helped take a chainsaw to the blocks, sizing them for the castle.

When the season ends Robinson is expecting to have some fun with the wall. Last year before it could melt away, he and his son took a chainsaw, enjoying chopping through the ice.

"We were getting tired of the wall," laughs Robinson.

Related Stories