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

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Winter, the “splendid season,” is more than just a time of year. It is the metaphor of who and what Canadians have been, are, and imagine themselves to be. Winning gold medals or owning the podium at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver would only be a shallow victory if Canadians accepted winter’s decline as a fact of life beyond their control.

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What is a Canadian? It’s an open-ended question that inevitably generates as many answers as there are people considering it. Responses have changed over the years, as Canadian identity has shifted throughout the decades.

One of the more recent ways of describing a Canadian, however, is contrasting the differences between them and their influential neighbours directly to the south. If you continue that dialogue though, eventually and inevitably, the conversation reverts to a time-honoured self-identifier. Pressed hard enough, most will declare it is a Canadian’s relationship with winter. Snow, sleet, blinding blizzards, and ice are all symbols of the Canadian experience, and the telling images of who we are.