In Ajax, neighbourliness seems to be on thin ice.

A local family is being ordered to dismantle their tiny front yard skating rink or face a fine of up to $25,000 after a neighbour filed a complaint with the town’s bylaw office.

“Someone complained that my skating rink doesn’t meet the appearance standard of the neighbourhood,” Karen Callery, who built the rink for her two young children, said on Thursday.

“I want my kids to grow up not sitting on a couch and watching TV all day; I want them to grow up as adults that appreciate exercise as a lifestyle.”

This is the third year that Callery has constructed a skating rink on her front lawn in Ajax’s quiet Nottingham subdivision. Before building it, Callery, who works as an engineer in Toronto, even consulted the town’s bylaw office to make sure her rink was up to municipal standards.

The 5-by-6-metre rink sits atop a piece of blue tarpaulin and is ringed by metre-high boards. Callery built the rink on her front lawn because her backyard slopes and has a swimming pool in it.

“I really tried hard to make sure that I was following all the rules,” Callery said.

The Town of Ajax bans front yard structures such as sheds. While gardens and fountains are excluded from this ban, it seems the painted plywood boards that ring Callery’s rink are the source of the problem.

“The Town of Ajax Bylaw Services was made aware of a front yard ice rink on Alden Square after a resident submitted a complaint,” Derek Hannan, the town’s manager of bylaw services, said in an emailed statement Thursday. “[We] investigated, and determined the rink was in violation of the Town’s zoning bylaw. The resident has been advised to remove the boards around the rink, and has two weeks to voluntarily comply.”

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Angela Ficili, who lives across the street, says she has no problem with Callery’s rink.

“If that’s what she wants to do for her kids, there’s nothing wrong with it,” Ficili said from her home on Thursday.

This isn’t the first time that people on the tiny residential street have been the victims of overzealous bylaw enforcement, Ficili said.

Ficili claims someone in the neighbourhood filed a complaint with the town after her family parked a vehicle on the interlocking bricks in front of their house. When her family refused to move the vehicle, town officials took them to court. They eventually had to pay a $300 fine for violating a bylaw.

“We don’t know what to do,” Ficili said. “Our whole street has problems with a person who doesn’t mind their own business.”

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Next door to Ficili, Gian Carlo Valente says his father has had two run-ins with bylaw officers because of a neighbour’s complaints. One was for the construction of a backyard shed that’s barely visible from the street; the other was for blowing autumnal leaves onto the road before sweeping them up.

Two doors down from Callery, Shawn Bush says he’s received numerous calls from town bylaw officers for offences as varied as flying an Isle of Man flag in front of his house (a neighbour thought it resembled a swastika), putting his truck up on jack stands to repair it (there’s a bylaw against keeping an unoperational vehicle on your driveway) and parking a small trailer in front of his house (there’s a bylaw against that too).

“The Town of Ajax has to tone down on their bylaws,” Bush said in front of his house on Thursday.

“I think the ice rink is a really good thing for the family... Whoever’s complaining about it is speaking out of turn.”

The identity of the complainer remains unknown.

Callery, meanwhile, is still deciding what to do about her innocuous little rink.

“If I have two weeks, I think I’m going to flood it until I have the most amount of ice I can put in there,” Callery said. “On the last day, I’ll take the boards down and see how long the ice lasts. At least the kids will have a place to skate.”