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Mélanie Cyr’s sons would throw snowsuits over their pyjamas and head into the night to flood the narrow skating rink in the alley behind their house. Then two weeks ago they returned home from school to find the city had dumped a load of crushed stone on the rink, ruining it after a neighbour complained about the slippery conditions. Another rink farther down the alley suffered the same fate.

“I won’t repeat the words they used,” Ms. Cyr said Monday of her three boys, aged 11, 13 and 15. “They were mad because it was a lot of work…. It was like seeing their work destroyed.”

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With winter’s arrival, the city’s roughly 475 kilometres of back alleys, which have inspired writers and artists over the decades, become mostly snow-covered and deserted. Parents in at least one central Montreal neighbourhood thought they had found a way to change that.

On a two-block stretch of the alley behind Casgrain Ave. in the Villeray district, three homemade rinks popped up in December. The alley, running behind two rows of houses, is city property, but in the winter it is not plowed.