Hancock's@Hancock's

Like father like son and on it goes.

During lunch hour from school, William and Daniel Hancock gear up in a makeshift dressing room at their house.

William, 10, pulls on a Forteau Falcons sweater, while Daniel, 7, pulls on a Team Canada sweater.

The Hancock brothers skate out onto the ice, a roughly 55-foot by 30-foot surface lined with boards about one foot tall, to keep from losing the puck in the snowbanks, overlooking Forteau Bay.

Above the net stands two floodlights for nighttime shinny.

"We go out every night for two hours," William said. "Then (minor) hockey.

"Everyday and every night," Daniel added.

William's and Daniel's father, Brad, has been building the rink each winter for the past seven years.

But the family tradition started in 1978 when Brad's father, Milton, built a rink on his lawn.

"For the boys to skate because they enjoyed it," Milton said.

"Nowhere else to skate," Brad said. "When I had the rink there was always a crowd of us, there was always enough, five or six of us."

What was it like being able to go out and skate whenever you wanted?

"It was great," Brad said. Pause. "It's great now," he laughed. "I'm out there every night now, and it's great for the kids, because you know the problem these days, with obesity and everything else, and the kids aren't healthy, they're on ski-doo and on the computer all the time, well, my kids are out there...they're out there pretty much every night."

"That's when we had one channel on the television," Milton laughed.

Mid-December, as in past years, Brad hosed the snow and tramped it in to a tight pack to form the base of the rink.

"I even tried snowshoes this year," Milton said.

What happened?

"They got clogged," he and Brad laughed. "I couldn't lift them by the end of it."

The two use buckets of water from the nearby brook instead of the hose to fill it in because it's quicker. The process, which this year started Dec. 12, Brad figures, takes four to five days when the weather is cold.

"Every year I try to count the buckets that I use to put on it," Brad said. "I probably carry about 500 buckets by the time they're ready to skate on it, because there's places (beneath the ice) that are six or eight inches thick."

But it's worth it, year after year.

In addition to using the rink most evenings, William, Daniel and Andrew, their 16-year-old older brother, are in minor hockey.

Daniel clocks about as much ice time as Sidney Crosby.

He makes sure of it too, having shovelled the snow off the rink twice by himself in the past week.

"He's improved 500 per cent since he started hockey this fall because they get so much more ice time," Brad said.

"He's very mobile," Milton said. "He's good on his skates. That's all that does it, is a patch of ice like that.

"All last week when you were huddled away in the warm, they were still out there," Brad laughed. "Two Sundays ago it was minus 36 with the wind and they were out there."

William and Daniel, would you do anything else in those temperatures?

"No," they say.

Why do you do it?

"I dunno."

Because you love it so much?

"Yes."

Save for the scattered shattered window, the rink is harmless. Even last year, Brad said, he smashed the window out of his father's van.

A couple of windows, a couple of lights...on it goes.