Former NHLer Doug Gilmour will skate alongside fans at this Saturday’s second annual Havelock Festival of Fire and Ice.
The daylong event at the HBMProud-Havelock Community Outdoor Rink on George Street East in Havelock — 40 kilometres east of Peterborough — is a free family event. Festivities get underway at noon, featuring public skating, ice carvings, vendors, marshmallow roasting, a lantern walk, bonfires, chili tasting, an iceblock play area, a screening of the movie Frozen at the Havelock Centre and an outdoor fire performance by Trellis Arts and Entertainment.
Gilmour, the longtime captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs, will lace up his skates for a one-on-one game versus Penny Lewis, a Stirling, Ont., fan selected in a draw, beginning at 1 p.m. at the outdoor rink. Gilmour will then hold an autograph-signing session along with a public skate at the arena.
“It should be a lot of fun — great events on and off the ice,” Gilmour posted on Facebook. “I just want to say I am looking forward to it.”
Nicknamed “Killer,” Gilmour played 20 seasons (1983-2003) in the NHL with the St. Louis Blues, Calgary Flames, Maple Leafs, New Jersey Devils, Chicago Blackhawks, Buffalo Sabres and Montreal Canadiens. He accumulated 1,414 points in 1,474 regular-season games and helped the Flames win the Stanley Cup in 1989.
He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2011.
In recent years, Gilmour, a native of Kingston, was general manager of the Ontario Hockey League’s Kingston Frontenacs. However, in November 2019, he stepped down from the role to accept a position with the Leafs as a community representative.
On Tuesday night, organizers took advantage of the colder temperature to flood the outdoor rink and prepare it for the festival. The crews use a handmade ice cleaner and pieces of Zambonis to help flood the ice.
“The kids have been out skating on it like crazy so the ice was in pretty poor shape,” Dave Sharpe told Global News Peterborough at the rink. “So we are just putting it back together. So we scrape it down, give it a nice flood and do it all over again.”
A full schedule of events can be found on the festival’s Facebook page.
Last year, former Leafs captain Wendel Clark was the guest at the inaugural festival.
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