BY SAMANTHA MACCALLUM
SUMMERSIDE – A Nova Scotia man built a replica of the Grand Slam of Curling Sun Life Financial Player’s Championship happening this week in Summerside. The large model, which is on display at Credit Union Place, is made entirely from LEGO building blocks.
David MacDonald has been a fan of LEGO since he was a child, but he stopped playing with it for a while. It wasn’t until the last two or three years when LEGO start releasing sets geared more toward adults, that he got back into the hobby.
Two years ago MacDonald had the idea to do this for the Scotties Tournament of Hearts when it was being held in Charlottetown, but he didn’t have enough time to complete it all.
“I had never built something like this from scratch,” he said.
The first year he worked at it, he completed the sheets of ice, the sideboards and the stadium seating.
MacDonald brought it out again this year.
“I live in rural Nova Scotia, to pass the winters you gotta have a hobby,” he said.
He designed the LEGO model using a computer program to determine how many of each piece he would he need to build it.
MacDonald had to buy the arms, chests, and legs of the curlers and their gear separate because it was hard to find the right colour combinations for all the provinces and territories. He purchased all the pieces on Bricklink, from eight different countries.
He used 5,587 pieces to build the model.
“I tried to think of all the little details like trophies, cameramen, the lights, flowers by the scoreboard and the overhead cameras,” he said.
