Ottawa

Arcade comes to Petrie Island ice fishing village

Aimé Drouin has opened a small arcade in a hut in the ice fishing village at Petrie Island.

Mini arcade features classic games in a hut on Ottawa River

Text to Speech Icon
Listen to this article
Estimated 2 minutes
The audio version of this article is generated by text-to-speech, a technology based on artificial intelligence.
Aimé Drouin has opened a small arcade in a hut in the ice fishing village at Petrie Island. (Alan Neal/CBC)

There's a hut in the ice fishing village at Petrie Island that looks a little different than most. Big red letters invite you inside to play with a single word: ARCADE.

On mobile? Click here to listen to Aimé Drouin talk about the ice arcade.

There are four classic machines in the windowless 8x12-foot ice hut.

"I thought, 'I'm going to do something crazy, something that's never been done. I'm going to put an arcade on the ice and be the first to do it,'" Aimé Drouin told All in a Day host Alan Neal.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day is one of four classic arcade machines in the hut. (Stu Mills)

"Back in the day there was no Facebook, no Twitter. People would actually go to arcades to play, challenge each other, and then you'd make friends out of it."

Drouin renovated the old ice shack to open a small arcade this winter. Crammed inside is Terminator 2: Judgment Day; Street Fighter Three; Super Chase and a machine with a Ms. Pac Man header that features 60 games.

"All the old games that you loved to play in the '80s, they're there, all in one shell," he said.

The hut is open to the public from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. but Drouin said ice fishers have so far been shy to step inside.

"If there's no interest in it this weekend, I'll probably be closing it down," he said. "The arcade industry is not as strong as it used to be."

There are four classic arcade games in a refurbished ice-fishing hut on the Ottawa River. (Alan Neal/CBC)