Let It Snow. Darryl Humber

in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, a book that ironically might have sat in the limited library of those Bible-believing skaters. It was a special place in which skates were clamped on one’s leather shoes, eventually tearing off the soles. Hockey sticks were fashioned from crooked willow branches and a puck could be anything from a block of wood to a frozen cow pie.

      In eastern Canada the dream of winter was more often of the pleasures found in natural rinks built in schoolyards or in one’s backyard. Long into the nights youngsters would glide over the glassy surface, drawn home only by the call for dinner.

      In Ontario your treasure was most likely a Toronto Maple Leafs sweater. In Quebec youngsters donned the bright “rouge, blanc et blue” of Les Canadiens, unless, like the unfortunate child in Roch Carrier’s “The Hockey Sweater” (“Le chandail de hockey”), the T. Eaton Company mistakenly sent the young Quebecker one emblazoned with “une abominable feuille d’érable” or “an abominable maple leaf,” in which case your mother made you wear it so as not to disappoint Mr. Eaton.

      If there is such a thing as a series of small straws that eventually broke the back of national unity, Carrier’s fictional character had more than his load, though on a deeper level the story speaks to the profound shared experience of all Canadians, regardless of whether their first language is French of English. Saturday nights in winter were the purest demonstrations of this realm.

      If you lived in English Canada, it was a magical time for listening to Foster Hewitt’s radio call of the Leafs game. He inspired young and old to imagine their own lives as great stars or at the very least as persons who might one day be lucky enough to spend just one evening in the hallowed Maple Leaf Gardens. It was the closest thing to a public shrine in Canada, that is unless you lived in Quebec, where the Montreal Forum played a similarly haunting role.

      Young women might vicariously share in these moments, but for them the exploits of Barbara Ann Scott, women’s figure-skating gold medalist in the 1948 Winter Olympics, inspired their own twirls and spins on ice, even as they asked Santa Claus to please leave under their family tree a doll fashioned in the likeness of the great skater who had won her first national junior title as an eleven-year-old.

      Winter has shaped Canada’s image and been embraced with hearty enthusiasm from snowshoeing hikers in the nineteenth century to future hockey stars on homemade rinks and to the indoor spectacle of figure-skating carnivals and curling bonspiels.

       A Barrie women’s hockey team in 1897. Back row: Louise King, Mabel Lowe, Mrs. Ben Smith, Lucie Payne, Flo Brigham, May Graham; front row: Annie Graham, Amy Lowe, Ethel Urquhart.

      Our literature, our songs, and our memories of youth all have their connection to winter’s refreshing tonic. Even as we curse ice-laden roads on the morning commute to work or watch with keen anticipation the Weather Channel’s daily prediction for our weekend ski trip, Canadians sense that somehow this bracing time of year is central to their very survival.

      In Montreal, snowshoers of the nineteenth century sang their wish that winter could be nine months long, but alas, twenty-first-century winter’s diminishment to a weak reminder of its former glory is a real possibility as climate change wreaks long-term havoc. Winter means something for the sense of Canadian identity, and for the collective memory of the country’s heritage, nor should we forget those businesses and industries dependent on the “splendid season.”

      It’s quite possible, however, that Vancouver’s hosting of the 2010 Winter Olympics will mark the last time the Games will ever be held in Canada. Assuming Canada is called upon in twenty to twenty-four years from now (the period between the Games in Calgary in 1988 and those in 2010 was twenty-two years because the Games began a new four-year cycle in 1994, two years after those in 1992, in order that they not be held the same year as the Summer Games), winter may be a fading memory, or the cost of moving all events indoors may make them financially prohibitive. We can’t forget that hockey, figure skating, and speed skating were all once played on outdoor surfaces.

      It isn’t that one can’t build an indoor facility for ski jumping or any number of outdoor sports. The better question is why one would want to other than as a fading memory of a once noble time of year?

      In these pages we embark upon a voyage of both remembrance and caution. Looking back at the conditions that instilled feverish excitement at the first glimpse of a snowflake in the darkening days of late fall, and forward to the unusual world of melting ice caps, unpredictable weather, and assaults on Canada’s backyard ice rink culture.

      Winter plays a major role in the Canadian story, not only in how it has shaped our sports history, but, more directly, our experience of everyday life. Nor is climate change only to blame for changes in its role. Increasing urbanization and higher expectations of comfort have also played their part in lessening winter’s place in our lives.

      What did our great grandparents and their predecessors think of winter’s distinct conditions? No doubt they griped, but evidence seems to suggest they also welcomed its peculiar opportunities.

      Fred Grant’s memories from this era, preserved in the Simcoe County Archives outside Barrie, Ontario, provide some clues. Writing in the early 1920s, many years after he had left for the Pacific Coast to play professional lacrosse in Victoria in early 1892, he recalled the winter sports and recreation of his youth in Barrie and its surroundings in the 1870s and 1880s. He also had many things to say about how games like hockey have morphed into something different in the twentieth century.

       A Barrie women’s hockey team in the early twentieth century. Back row: Bertha Holmes, Del Spry, Georgie Maconchy; front row: Zilla Stevenson, Olive McCarthy, Jessie Oliver, Bessie Stevenson.

      He will be an occasional companion as we undertake this journey.

      A small community of a few thousand people, approximately one hundred kilometres north of downtown Toronto, Barrie in the late nineteenth century was the gateway to the emerging cottage and summer recreation country north of it, and the main centre for a largely rural hinterland.

      Fred Grant’s memories of his youth reflected Barrie’s countryside location and its position on the shores of Kempenfelt Bay, off Lake Simcoe. It was here he witnessed an unusual sport characteristic of the day:

      Horse racing on the ice on Barrie’s bay used to be a very popular sport, and was held during a whole week each winter. A mile track, sixty feet or more wide was cleared with a huge snow scraper, and the resulting races provided most interesting sport for the very large crowds of spectators and horsemen from all over the province, as well as the local followers of the sport.

      And of course these latter included the curious small boy who always found something interesting in anything new. Sometimes after a ridge of snow three or four feet high on either side of the track had been piled up by the scraper, a thaw and frost would follow, and open-air skating would be carried on, while these races were being run, which added to the enjoyment.

      The names of the horses are not so easily remembered, but the popular favourite always was a little black horse that stood straight up on its hind feet and looked as if it would topple over on the driver each time it turned before starting — I think it was named Black Diamond, and it certainly could travel too though it was only half the size of the other racers.

       Sledding in Manitoba, 1886.

      One might ask if a time can be pinpointed when this winter experience of outdoor frivolity and lively socialization disappeared from the everyday, generally positive experience of Canadians and became simply a nuisance to overcome and an aggravation to endure? Or, despite our grumbling, do we not secretly relish the season as one distinctly our own, particularly in the ways we respond