"Is that a guy driving a Zamboni into a Tim Hortons? Wait, does that guy have our logo on his Zamboni?"
When we arrived in the office on the morning of December 21st we were pleasantly surprised to come across what is perhaps the greatest video we've ever come across. On its own, seeing video footage of a person driving an ice resurfacing machine through the drive-thru of a Tim Hortons is already spectacular. But when you add in the fact that the Zamboni randomly had our website's logo on it, it suddenly became the absolute perfect story for us to write.
Now, we bet a few of you read that last sentence and instantly questioned just how "random" the placement of our logo on the man's Zamboni was. In the age of viral and guerilla marketing, it's natural to look at stories like these with a healthy dose of skepticism. Readers, co-workers and friends have all asked us if we had anything to with this Stoney Plain, Alberta resident's trip to Timmies, and time and time again we've firmly stated, no. That hasn't stopped people from remaining skeptical, though.
After coming back from a busy holiday period, we hopped on a phone call with the Zamboni man himself, Jesse Myshak. Speaking with Myshak, we discovered why he had named his backyard rink the BarDown area, why he had the logo on his Zamboni, what led him to driving it to a Tim Hortons, who reached out to him afterward and finally, debunked the myth that we were both in cahoots.
Daniel Zakrzewski: So Jesse, what made you want to name your arena the BarDown Arena?
JM: Well to be honest we had a cabin down back that we were gonna kinda convert into a bar. I have a lot of friends that come over and we hangout in the back with the fire and stuff like that, so when I put the rink down back we just kind of came up and my buddy said “what do you call your rink?” And I was like, “well I don’t know.” We’ve got a bar down back, there’s the hockey term BarDown…I said let’s call it BarDown Arena! He said yeah, that’s a cool idea. So he made me up a sign and he must have got the logo from you guys. Then he built me a sign for my BarDown backyard rink, and that’s where that came from.
DZ: We’ve been asked over and over whether or not we had anything to do with it, obviously as we’ve discussed, we don’t (laughs). Have people been asking you the same thing?
JM: Yeah (laughs). I actually went over there (Toronto) on holidays and one fella told me “I thought for sure that was a publicity stunt and it was all TSN that put that together and did this whole deal,” and I was like no. This is my own personal Zamboni. But yeah, I’ve been asked a few times if it was a publicity stunt or not.
DZ: How long have you owned the Zamboni for?
JM: I just actually bought it a month or two before I ended up driving it down the road. I bought it from a small town in Saskatchewan and brought it back to do a little bit of work on it. Just to make sure everything functioned and ran and then put the wrap on it.
DZ: I’m guessing someone didn’t drive it over to you and it was actually shipped to you (laughs)?
JM: Yeah, I sent a truck down and we picked it up and brought it back.
DZ: Is this the first time you’ve actually ever driven the Zamboni to a store since you’ve only had it for a little while?
JM: Yeah, you betcha. I’ve never had any experience otherwise. No, it was a first for me.
DZ: What made you want to go to the drive thru?
JM: It was kind of more of a dare than anything. I was in the shop doing some work with it, and it wasn’t too far from Tim Hortons and my house isn’t too far either. So it was more of a joke. As in…“you’ve gotta go through Tim Hortons. That is the most Canadian thing ever! And that would be hilarious!” And it kinda went from there, okay yeah, lets do it, I’ll just drive it home. And it was a good way to get all the crap out of the system and make sure everything works and do it that way.
DZ: Is that the furthest you’ve ever actually driven it outside from your home?
JM: Yeah (laughs), I was wondering if I’d make it home. I actually made it the whole way.
DZ: What does it run on?
JM: It runs on propane. It works awesome. I had it home for a few days did a couple floods of it and then I ended up running out then I had to go refill but it should last me the rest of the year now.
DZ: What was the response like on that day? Were you expecting your video to blow up as much as it did? And how many requests were you getting for phone calls?
JM: It didn’t happen until I kind of posted it that evening, because a guy I know was in the area and he pulled over and took a video and sent it to me. So I decided I’d post to see. Then next day in the evening my phone went absolutely nuts with Twitter requests and different stuff like that, and news outlets started calling. I’ve probably had over 20 or so calls from different radio stations from Ontario all the way to the Yukon. You know, news stations all over the US asking to use it, the video and story; it’s kind of gone crazy. I actually just got back from my holiday and in the mail I got a gift. Some total stranger from Ontario was out shopping and bought a hockey puck ornament that says “my second car is a Zamboni.” And said, “as soon as we saw the video and saw this, I had to buy it for you.” So they ended up sending it to me in the mail here just the other day. That was pretty cool. It kinda just kept going.
