Grande Prairie woman’s hand-built igloo captures community’s attention

Grande Prairie’s Heather Rouzes is gained some attention and notarity online in the community this past weekend, after a friend of her’s posted a picture of the igloo she built in her front yard on Facebook.

In a conversation with EverythingGP, Rouzes says she got the idea to build the colourful igloo because she’s always wanted one.

“I saw somebody else building one and I decided that I wanted one. I’ve always wanted an igloo, I mean who doesn’t?,” she joked. “We are Canadian! That was basically the inspiration, I saw one and wanted one for myself, the kids and the neighbour kids.”

Rouzes says she had never attempted to build anything like an igloo before, but she decided this winter to give it a go.

Everything used to construct the igloo was made by hand according to Rouzes. She says the bricks were constructed using bread pans.

“I froze them (the bricks) in my freezer above my fridge before I realized that at one point, it was colder outside than it is in a freezer,” she recalls. “That’s why it took me so long to build the igloo.

“I was freezing ten bricks a night (in the freezer) and then slowly I figured I could freeze 30 bricks a night outside, so that’s what I did afterword.”

Initially, Rouzes says she was only using the cheap bread pans to make her bricks. However, the pans kept breaking. She then upgraded to the higher quality bread pans, which made making the ice bricks a lot easier as the pans wouldn’t break.

In total, the igloo was constructed using nearly 750 bricks, while the landscaping around the igloo is covered with over 14,000 ice cubes. All of the bricks are also sprinkled with food colouring to help give the igloo some colour.

Rouzes says it took her two months to finish construction on the igloo.

She joked and wanted to send out an apology to everyone in Grande Prairie who was looking for bread pans and food colouring over the last several months, as she says it was likely her dwindling the supply chain of the items in the city.

Photo: Heather Rouzes

Photo: Heather Rouzes

Photo: Heather Rouzes

According to Rouzes, she didn’t use any YouTube tutorials to build the igloo, as she just thought about what would make sense for constructing the igloo.

“I literally just thought ‘what shape kind of looks like a brick?’ I cook all the time and bake and thought a bread pan is the exact same shape as a standard brick.

“It worked out really well.”

Rouzes mentioned many people offered her help, however she was determined to construct this igloo herself.

She did receive some help though, thanks to her neighbours and fiancee for their help collecting the snow from other neighbours’ yards.

It is unknown how long the igloo will stand as the seasons start to change, but Rouzes says she potentially plans on building a “mini-igloo city” with one large igloo and a bunch of smaller igloos for her kids to enjoy.

The igloo is located in the Creekside neighbourhood and Rouzes encourages people to come and check it out, reminding those who drive by that the speed limit in the community is 30 km/h.