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

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Later on we were old enough to pilot a single rig ourselves. They talk now of a motor spark plug, meaning a second-hand “tin lizzie” probably, but ask any of the old boys and they’ll tell you they had nothing on an old-fashioned horse and cutter outfit you could hire for two dollars for a whole afternoon or evening at Alex Fraser’s Livery.

Two wars and a depression didn’t kill the experience of winter, but did consign it to a place of less prominence in daily lives. It would take the return of a somewhat more stable peace after 1945, and the increasing affluence of this post–Second World War period to finally restart the great engine of winter sports.

At first it was youngsters playing hockey in an expanding network of minor hockey in the 1950s. However, it was an enthusiasm generally available only for boys, although one young girl named Abby Hoffman did make an improvised appearance on one of those gender-limiting teams before her eventual discovery.

There was the steady growth of a winter-sports industry for skiers and curlers in an expanding network of clubs and resorts. Once formerly limited to only the very wealthy, these sports now attracted a more egalitarian membership.