Have you ever wondered why the pond at A.D. Penner Park isn't used as an outdoor skating rink? Apparently, there is a good reason for that.

The idea was brought up at a recent city council committee meeting. Councillor Jac Siemens then spoke up, noting that was actually the original plan when A.D. Penner Park was first built in the early 1980s.

“One of the plans was to put a picnic shelter in the area. The outdoor pool that was built in 1979, we would use that was as the warming hut, the pond would provide the skating surface and the barbecue area because there is an island in the middle of the pond.”

Siemens says the city didn’t have a Zamboni in those days. Instead, they had a tractor with an ice machine which they brought all the way from the arena to flood the pond.

“Little did we know, we should have tested the ice beforehand. It was a cold winter in 1983 and there was a lot of snow from what I remember. We took the tractor and bladed off the snow first and we took the tractor and we started flooding and we put the tractor through the ice."

Luckily, Siemens says the ice machine kept the tractor from going all the way under so they were able to save it. He adds they did their best to get the tractor out quickly before any photos were taken of the little adventure.

“What we discovered is that there is a creek running underneath that pond year-round and the ice is thin at various places and that changes according to how much water is running. Over the years, we always thought that ‘Can't we block the water? Can't we do something?' We tried two or three different times and we always found that the ice conditions would change too much to put a skating rink there for the wintertime.”

Siemens adds the flow of water may have changed enough since the early '80s but that is why there isn't an outdoor rink on the A.D. Penner pond.