What do bolts, steel beams and Guy Rideout have in common? For the past generation, each has been integral to the endurance of the Whitney Forum.
Now after nearly 27 years at the fabled arena – including 18 as manager – the man they call Beastie will be retiring in the coming months.
“It’s time for me to move on,” says Rideout, 55, who will tentatively step down in June or July.
While he looks forward to the freedom of retirement, Rideout will leave behind a position he is proud to hold.
And it’s no wonder. Keeping the Whitney functioning at a high level is a tricky task considering the building opened in 1958 and has the wear, tear and aged hardware to prove it.
Once, during the bone-chilling winter of 2013-14, Rideout set up an overnight camp in his office so he could be present to operate the troubled boiler by hand, lest it fail and freeze up the entire building.
On other occasions, he has acted as a makeshift security guard. When a melee broke out during a 1999 game between the Flin Flon Bombers and Estevan Bruins, complete with an Estevan player going ballistic, Rideout intervened to ensure the aggressor could not reach Flin Flon players who had not dressed for the match-up.
His hair got pulled in the scuffle, but did he get hurt?
“Oh hell no. You can’t hurt my melon,” Rideout says, a line characteristic of the light-hearted bluntness with which he speaks.
Sometimes Rideout was simply in awe of the atmosphere at the rink. Working games during the Bombers’ 1993 championship run will always be a career highlight.
“That was pretty thrilling,” he recalls.
“[Fans] were two and three deep on the walkways and they were standing on the railing and the beams, and they were sitting on the concrete stairs. People were bringing their own cushions, sitting on the stairwells.”
Growing up in Flin Flon, Rideout was no stranger to the Whitney as a youth. His parents took in Bomber billets, and although he wasn’t much of a player himself, he had an affinity for the game.
It was during his youth that he picked up his nickname, Beastie – a moniker so well-known that some people aren’t aware of his real name.
Rideout recalls a friend saying “beast alarm, beast alarm.” When he asked who “beast” was, the word became his nickname.
“I changed it to ‘Beastie’ and made it a little softer,” he says.
As a young man, Rideout spent several years working at HBM&S, now Hudbay. He left the company and joined the City of Flin Flon, working at the landfill before transferring to the Whitney Forum in December 1989.
The Whitney was a different place when Rideout, not yet 30 at the time, arrived. His duties as a “rink rat” included driving the zamboni and, less glamourously, scrubbing toilets.
Smoking was allowed in the stands those days, and many Bomber fans gladly exercised their right.
“If you had, say, 800 people in here and 400 or 500 of them smoked, right from pipes to cigars to cigarettes, there would be like a wave of smoke going across,” recalls Rideout.
Over the years, Rideout has been part of several upgrades to the rink. Among them: an expansion of the Bombers’ dressing room, upgraded rink boards and new, taller glass along the rink (along with protective netting at each end to protect fans against wayward pucks).
Rideout loves the Whitney in a home-away-from-home sort of way, and takes seriously his role in ensuring the facility runs smoothly. He says he has chosen to work an average of more than two unpaid hours per day since becoming manager.
Area hockey fans love the Whitney, too, and they’re not alone.
“People [from] a $14-million [arena] complex in Dauphin, they come in here and just compliment myself and the staff and the whole building, how nice it looks,” Rideout says. “They just can’t believe it.”
Rideout gives ample credit to his staff and is quick to praise his predecessor, former arena manager Gary Kozar, for all of the knowledge he passed down.
“We just don’t have an overabundance of people that can run in here to help us,” Rideout says. “So he taught me how to troubleshoot.”
As he prepares to leave his post, Rideout is readying his trainee, Tanya Arnold, to take his place.
Arnold says she enjoys the atmosphere of the rink, the different people she works with and the challenge of learning the mechanics of the building.
She also expects a never-ending learning curve.
“When Beastie does retire, I’m not going to know everything in the building,” Arnold says, “and 30 years from now when I retire, I still won’t know everything in the building.”
Rideout believes the Whitney will be in good hands with Arnold. That’s especially important to him since he does not believe Flin Flon will build another hockey arena in his lifetime.
“We’ve got to look after what we’ve got and baby it,” he says.
Misconceptions
Rideout says a number of misconceptions have surrounded the Whitney Forum during his tenure.
Among them:
• During the frigid winter of 2013-14, some hockey fans complained that the temperature inside the arena was too cold. Some thought staff had deliberately turned down the heat. In actual fact, Rideout says, there were problems with the boiler and ice plant, with the latter issue lessening the output of the arena’s heat-reclaim system. He says staff hung a plastic curtain by the entrance doors to block incoming drafts, but somebody soon wrecked it by yanking on it.
• Some have suggested the ice at the Whitney is too soft, but Rideout estimates the temperature of the ice floor is the coldest, if not the coldest, of any Manitoba rink. “The work that my staff have done over the years to maintain that ice is phenomenal,” he says.
• Rideout says some people believe the rink is overstaffed for some Bomber games. He says this isn’t true, and that when larger numbers of rink workers are seen meeting up before a game, it’s to discuss who is willing to be on-call during the game if extra help is needed.
• Rideout says there was a rumour that people who walk loops around the ice surface are going to be charged a fee for the privilege. He says that’s news to him and that he isn’t sure how such a rule would be enforced.
