Oh Canada: Alberta Man Builds Amazing Outdoor Snow Cinema Theatre

If you spent this long weekend cowering from the -39 degree weather under blankets with the central heating blasting, you may want to look away now.

Because Elsa Graham Whatmough, who loves the cold, decided to embrace the weather and create a space for locals to watch movies under the stars…in the snow.

The Fort McMurray resident, who is originally from Ontario but has lived in Alberta for eight years, spent eight days packing and shaping snow, shovelling and building a wall.

The result? A 20 x 9 foot snow wall movie screen, complete with seating area, in Thickwood Park near Whatmough’s home. Graham’s time lapse Facebook video shows the slow and laborious process as he build and stacks the snow in the freezing cold, stopping briefly for breaks and eventually nightfall.

Snow TheaterAfter 5 Days of shovelling and packing snow, the outdoor theater is taking shape: I have a 20ft x 9ft wall completed for the screen and 2 booths for sitting. I am going to attempt to make tables and benches out of ice in the the coming days

Posted by Where the Highway Ends on Wednesday, January 20, 2016

He built a loveseat, a throne, and a restaurant style booth with a table for visitors to enjoy the movies from. He has showcased a movie that followed him and his friend (Luke Gibson, who made the film) from Fort McMurray on the ice roads to Yellowknife, complete with ice fishing and the Northern Lights. Whatmough, who is currently between jobs, even built a “Quincy” so that he could sleep overnight outside one evening.

“Entertainment comes in all forms and who wants to go to a movie theatre inside when you can go to one outside?” asks the video on Graham’s website, Where the Highway Ends.

“I was just down on Gregoire Lake, ice fishing, and I’ve always liked using my projector, and I saw there was a bunch of snow down there and I figured I could try and build a wall out of snow and see out how well it worked as a projector screen” says Graham.

According to the video, there have been four screenings with 30 people and more will be advertised on his Facebook page. But unfortunately, according to CBC, due to the unseasonably warm weather earlier in the year, his theatre was short-lived and began to melt away.

But for those of us experiencing cooler climates around the country and who feel so inclined, Graham has created an Instructable, allowing us to follow the steps to create our own snow cinema. All you have to do now is Let It Go…

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