VAUDREUIL-DORION – While this may have been the coldest February on record in Quebec, one man on a quiet, unsuspecting street in Vaudreuil thought he would embrace the cold.
“There’s maybe some neighbours who were wondering what the hell was going on in my backyard,” laughed Michel Charlebois.
Charlebois decided to get really creative with all that came down this year, building a twenty-foot wall of ice right in his backyard that he’s started using it to project hockey games. And once he got going, there was no stopping him.
“I realized there’s way too much snow just for the screen, I should do the whole backyard,” Charlebois added.
That backyard is now a full-on ice cinema. He’s built multiple rows of seats out of snow.
“People think I’m crazy because I used just one shovel for the whole thing,” said Charlebois.
There’s even a makeshift bar in a corner, but, as all artists, he’s still not completely satisfied.
“There’s still some work to do on it. It’s not an HD screen,” Charlebois joked.
It took Charlebois a good month to get his ice cinema.
“He was out here every night, we did not see each other, we did not eat supper together,” joked Raquel Fournier, Charlebois’s girlfriend.
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On Saturday evening, Charlebois surprised his co-workers with his finished masterpiece.
“I did not think it would be like this,” said Lance Ford, one of Charlebois’s co-workers.
“It goes back to the old days when I was young we didn’t have internet, and the consoles, we were outside all the time so it’s kind of bringing that back,” added Ford.
Michel’s girlfriend says this came as no shocker to her, as the ice cinema is just a reflection of the type of person Charlebois is.
“That’s totally him, he’s the first one to come up with these awesome ideas that no one ever thinks about. And he has the energy and courage to do it,” said Fournier.
“He does a lot of crazy weird things, but in a good way,” said Ford.
Charlebois is getting married in October. Part of the reason he had started doing this was to lose some weight before the wedding. He’s since then lost over fifteen pounds.
“He melted away, poof!” laughed his girlfriend.
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