What do you do when it's -10° in the sun with a windchill of -20? Well if you are Canadian, you head outside to enjoy it!
We received great feedback from all who attended our first ever attempt at a winter social activity. The weather was cool and the wind was brisk, but the participants had lots of fun. And gallons of hot chocolate.
Activities included the Melissa Brier, our own version of curling based on an idea we shamelessly stole from the FOCA website. With a sheet and rocks prepared by people who had no idea what they were doing, participants hurled rocks made from old plastic coffee cans and scrap metal bits, filled with -- what else? -- ice! for weight. Even the paint was home-made: we don't want any harmful residue when it all melts into the lake, so we invented our own environmentally freindly recipe consisting of water, food colouring, corn starch and chalk dust. It didn't so much dry as freeze to the ice. The ice was a bit "sticky" early on, but after the practice rounds it polished up to a nice slick surface and the rocks would readily curl. However, the game was so different from real curling with regulation equipment that any experience was negated and young kids could compete on equal footing with big strong adults. This was proven when the big tie-breaker turned out to be between a pair of retirees vs a pair too young to drive a car. Heck, one of the eventual winners was too short to drive a car.
What could compare with that? How about a game invented by a bunch of hungover guys one New Years Day? Snow golf, where everyone uses a 9 iron, the "hole" is a somewhat irregular 2' diameter circle painted on the ice and the flags are a piece of rag tied to a tent pole? Sounds like a good candidate to us!
Despite the adverse weather, around 40 people braved the cold wind to find out, and the concensus seems to be that this was a lot of fun. Of course,we're sure that the 12 litres of hot chocolate, 6 dozen hot dogs and 2 pots of baked beans had nothing to do with that. 
The event was hosted by Dwayne and Kathy Verhey, but Special Thanks goes out to Bill and Dianne Somers and Bruce and Diane Howlett for all their help preparing, organizing, cooking, serving and cleaning. And also to Dave Boucher for his help clearing slush off the rink.