Henry Knelsen learned how to skate a couple years ago. And he loves it.

In December, Knelsen, a local concrete contractor who runs Handy Henry in Simcoe, decided to build a temporary outdoor ice rink on the property the business leases across the street from its Norfolk Street South office.

“I said, ‘This is going to be fun – we’re going to build a rink and I’ll learn how to skate even better’,” he said on Wednesday.

It’s also an opportunity share an activity with others.

“We have an outreach here, so there’s always a whole bunch of us that get together. I figured it would be kind of fun to have a pop-up barbecue out here and do some skating.”

Knelsen, along with staff and friends, brought in some fill, graded the area with gravel and packed it down, and using wooden concrete forming boards and greenhouse plastic created a temporary foundation that measured 140 feet by 53 feet. The length was later reduced to about 100 feet.

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