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

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Canadians of the nineteenth century not only watched horse races on ice, but curled on outdoor ponds, and played their first hockey games on natural surfaces subject to fluctuating temperatures. By all accounts citizens of the day accepted such experiences as normal and, in their own way, part of the charm of living in a northern climate. Work was something to which they generally did not commute, particularly if they lived in the countryside. The greatest hazard may have been removing snow from overloaded roofs, getting lost on roads covered in drifting snow, or falling afoul of the era’s restrictive social codes.

Recalling those days when young women and men occasionally tested limits to their freedom, Grant said:

Of all those winter pastimes of boyhood days in Barrie, probably the one with the greatest appeal to those now many years absent from the old town were the skating parties on the bay, especially when the arrival of a clear expanse of ice and a bright moonlit night happened at the same time.