Читать книгу Let It Snow. Keeping Canada's Winter Sports Alive онлайн

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Climate change may erode this happy relationship and so it is incumbent on Canadians to lead the way, at first, in reversing this trend and then by restoring the glory of winter. It is a cause for national interest and engagement! Hopefully our words will do their part.

Darryl Humber

William Humber

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Ah, for the days when winter arrived in November and lasted well into April, when snow piled up to the second floor of one’s house, and summer was, as they say, two months of bad skating. Or are these just memories we tell each other as we age? Sometimes it seems as if we live in the dream of a world that existed only in our imaginations, like a Canadian version of the “Songlines” guiding the pathways of Australia’s original inhabitants.

If you live in western Canada, one such dream might consist of skating on an icy slough, that marshy, or reedy pool, pond, inlet, or backwater near a creek off which youngsters and their parents would shovel snow, perhaps by hand. Hot water drawn from a steam engine used to crush grain during the day might be drained into a few barrels, then placed on a sled and brought down to the creek and dumped onto the ice to help level the surface.