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

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A hockey club from Elmvale, Ontario, undated.

For CCM, or the Canada Cycle and Motor Company, winter was its corporate salvation.

Formed in the late nineteenth century as a conglomerate of smaller bicycle-making companies to compete with big American importers, the bottom had almost immediately dropped out of the cycling market. Cleverly, its Canadian managers opted for a year-round strategy of producing and selling bikes and accessories in the summer and skates and hockey equipment in the winter.

The irony in CCM’s case was that as bankruptcy overtook the company by the 1970s, its most valuable commodity was its logo and brand name, which survives today on hockey sweaters and helmets, and no doubt mystifies users as to its origin.

To our contemporary senses the long-ago winter of 1912 was as miserable as could be — so cold that by the end of February, Lake Ontario had frozen over and citizens wandered kilometres out into the lake to catch a glimpse of Rochester. Temperatures fell below -10°C on 56 days, while snowfall at 1.43 metres was nearly double the normal.