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Let it Snow
KEEPING CANADA’S WINTER SPORTS ALIVE
Let it Snow
KEEPING CANADA’S WINTER SPORTS ALIVE
DARRYL HUMBER & WILLIAM HUMBER
Foreword by Mayor Hazel McCallion
NATURAL HERITAGE BOOKS A MEMBER OF THE DUNDURN GROUP TORONTO
Copyright © Darryl Humber and William Humber, 2009
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.
Edited by Jane Gibson
Copy-edited by Shannon Whibbs
Designed by Courtney Horner
Printed and bound in Canada by Marquis
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Humber, Darryl
Let it snow : keeping Canada’s winter sports
alive / by Darryl Humber and William Humber.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-55488-461-2
1. Winter sports--Canada. 2. Climatic changes--Canada.
I. Humber, William, 1949- II. Title.
GV840.7.C2H86 2009 796.90971 C2009-903003-9
1 2 3 4 5 13 12 11 10 09
We acknowledge the support of The Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program, and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.
Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.
J. Kirk Howard, President
www.dundurn.com Published by Natural Heritage Books A Member of The Dundurn Group
Front cover image © Ben Heys/ iStockphoto
Back cover images: (top) Unidentified group of snowshoers, circa 1914. Manitoba Archives, Foote Collection N2175. (bottom) “Canadian Winter Sports: A Ladies’ Hockey Team, Toronto, Canada.” Author’s collection
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
• Foreword by Mayor Hazel McCallion
1 Wishing Winter Was Nine Months Long: Winter in Canada’s Past
2 How Winter Has Shaped Canadian Identity from Literature to Art
3 Winter Sports in Canada from Snowshoeing to Cross-Country Skiing
4 Canadian Winter Sports from Curling to Snowboarding
5 Our International Glory and How Winter Sports Made It Possible
6 Hockey in Legend, History, and Modern Times
7 Climate Change: Mitigation, Resilience, and Adaptation Strategies
8 The Meaning of Climate Change for the Future of Winter and Its Sports
9 The Romance of Winter Sports: Will It Eventually Go Indoors
• Notes and Sources
• Index
• About the Authors
FOREWORD by Hazel McCallion, C.M.
I have been Mayor of the City of Mississauga, Canada’s sixth-largest city and Ontario’s third largest, for over thirty years and am well aware of the ways in which our patterns of urban growth have had an effect not only on our quality of life, but conditions, like the weather, we take for granted.
As a young girl growing up in Quebec, I enjoyed the winter months when we counted on snowfalls and freezing nights to make the ice strong for skating and the hills alive with the sound of toboggans.
Those winters made it possible for me to eventually play professional women’s hockey in Montreal, though my salary of five dollars a game might not turn too many heads today.
However, we can’t be certain any longer about what kind of winter we might get — some have lots of snow, others barely a flake. But we’re beginning to understand that the places in which we live have an impact on our climate. The long-term prognosis of many experts isn’t encouraging. It would be sad indeed if the Winter Olympics in Vancouver 2010 was the last time we could hold outdoor winter events in Canada because of the season’s unpredictability.
Historically, Mississauga started out as a bedroom community with many of the conditions we now associate with urban sprawl. I wish now that more attention had been given to higher-density or transit-supportive land uses along our arterial roads. We are now trying to reverse some of the worst aspects of sprawl, and in so doing, contribute to the reduction in factors causing global warming.
These measures include providing more local employment opportunities, enhancing our natural areas, establishing a more compact and efficient urban form that supports transit, and improving the quality of our built environment and the unique