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

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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.