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Thirteen students from Yellowknife high schools used five 250 pound blocks of ice to bring their ideas to life during the second annual De Beers Inspired Ice Student Showcase in front of Yellowknife City Hall on March 2.

Braving temperatures of -23C without wind chill, the students, from Sir John Franklin High School and St. Patrick High School, took their tools to ice harvested from Great Slave Lake. For the second year in a row the Student Showcase was the lead up event to the international De Beers Inspired Ice Carving Competition later this month.

Terry Pamplin, a local ice carver and artist, gave the students a workshop at each of their schools the day before the event. There the students learned how to safely use ice carving tools and some tricks of the trade.

The Student Showcase started in the early morning at Somba K’e Civic Plaza outside Yellowknife City Hall, where facing bitter cold all day, the carvers dealt with several unique Northern problems. One student was hoping to use water to attach antlers made of ice to the caribou she and her teammate were carving, but the water bottle froze shut before she got the chance to use it. Another team working with food colouring struggled to get the enhancer out of its little bottle, which had also frozen shut.

At the end of the day students exchanged high fives and whoops of excitement as four Northern-inspired carvings – a caribou, an ulu (Inuit knife), an inukshuk and dreamcatcher, a tree and the Yellowknife Education District No. 1 logo stood where there had been plain blocks of ice only hours before.

The annual De Beers Inspired Ice NWT Ice Carving Competition will take place from March 22-24 is the largest in the history of the event, featuring 10 international teams. It is also the only natural lake ice carving competition in North America in 2018. The De Beers Inspired Ice Carving Competition is part of the very popular Yellowknife Long John Jamboree held on Great Slave Lake each March.

Check out the short video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/G8w2J3SuL2w