Warming hearts with an icy sculpture: Frozen fans flock to see Elsa's palace in Saskatoon
Saskatoon's Don Greer delights youngsters with ice sculpture inspired by hit Disney movie
The young and the young at heart have been flocking to King Crescent in Saskatoon's City Park neighbourhood ever since a certain ice palace sculpture has been put on display.
Standing nearly seven metres tall in Don Greer's front yard is a massive ice replica of the castle from the movie Frozen.
"It reaches right up into the elm trees on the boulevard, and it's about 10 feet across in a snowflake pattern," Greer told Bridget Yard on CBC Radio's Saskatoon Morning.
Greer, a retired architect who has been making unique sculptures since the 1970s, said the idea came straight from some Frozen fans.
"I have three granddaughters who love Elsa," the main character in the Disney hit, Greer said. "When the movie Frozen came out a few years ago [the castle] was in ice and the light kinda of came on — 'I can do this.'"
In the last couple of years he did sketches, and this year he had the time and space to make the sculpture a reality.
He started building in early December, working two or three hours a day, and finished just before Christmas.
His unique sculptures begin with a wooden armature frame, around which he puts chicken wire to get the desired shape.
Because the castle is so big, Greer built it in sections before putting it all together.
"Then I spray that with a fine mist of water from a garden hose," he said.
He slowly builds the ice up to be one or two inches thick on the chicken wire.
"Then I take a wood chisel and carve away the pieces, the drips, the icicles that I don't want on the feature, and then it becomes a finished product."
'You've made many, many girls really happy'
Greer, who for the past few years has been displaying his work at Resurrection Lutheran Church, developed his unique method one year when he was helping his father build a Christmas display.
They had sculptures of Santa Claus and reindeer up on blocks of ice — but Greer thought they needed a North Pole.
He found some chicken wire, rolled it up, stuck some lights inside of it and sprayed it with water.
"That was the first time I had tried it, and it worked."
Greer's house is across the street from a school, and he said since classes started up again in January after the break, there has been a steady flow of people coming to see the massive sculpture.
On one recent night, when he came home from curling, a mother and a couple of little girls were admiring the castle.
"The mom turned to me and said, 'You've made many, many girls really happy,'" Greer said.
With the weather so cold, the sculpture will probably last well into spring, he said.
And with Frozen 2 set to come out this year, Greer may have a sequel of his own.
With files from Courtney Markewich