New Zealand man creates colorful igloo in Canada
January 7, 2013
When Daniel Gray of New Zealand his girlfriend Kathleen Starrie came to Edmonton in Canada to spend the holidays with her family, he likely did not guess what he would be doing while celebrating Christmas. According to the Global Edmonton, Gray spent his time building a very colorful igloo during his stay.
"I wanted to keep him busy with something else," Brigid Burton, Starrie's mother, told the news source. "I didn’t want [Dan] to just be twiddling his thumbs while he’s here in Canada, so I thought, this needs to be something that's got some meat to it."
The preparation for this igloo started months earlier, when Starrie's family started to collect milk cartons in October. They filled them with colored water and then froze them, so when the couple came, they would be able to start building with these colorful bricks, the media outlet reports.
So, the couple along with her parents and a neighbor went to work, with Gray doing the majority of the maintenance. They had to be careful, however, with the very cold temperatures during the holiday week.
"We kind of prepared well and went to the store and got some toe warmers and hand warmers and all of that and just dressed warmly. We'd only work for about two hours maximum at a time, and then go inside and warm up," Gray told the news outlet.
One thing's for sure, Gray was determined to finish the project. The engineer took the best of his skill set to complete the 500 ice block structure. He even used what he called "snowcrete" to make sure that the ice blocks stayed together perfectly.
"There was a few calculations involved, mostly regarding an estimation of how many blocks we would require, just based on it being a spherical shape," Gray told the publication.
According to the New York Daily News, Burton made sure Gray finished the igloo as well, she even said that if Gray ever wants to marry her daughter, he better finish the igloo - which he did.
Those who want to talk about the igloo or creating others like it can make calls to Canada using international calling cards.