Let It Snow. Darryl Humber

       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.

      Trees and ice on the lake exploded in the cold with a sound like gunfire, the airbrakes of streetcars froze, and natural gas lines were clogged in a solid mass that had to be continually pumped. One simply bundled up against its worst sting and school went on despite the need to wear one’s outdoor clothing in rooms often no more than 18°C.

      But the ice sailing in Toronto harbour was brilliant, and the early challenges of artificial ice were forgotten for at least one winter.

      If he hadn’t moved west by this time Fred Grant might have joined the festivities, as he recalled his own youth in Barrie:

      There used to be some pretty fine sport, too, in ice-boating on the bay, in which Levi Carley and Ike Boon were the most prominent and had the fastest and largest boats. It was fun enough when you were out skating to jump on and have a ride, but far better to hang onto the frame and slide on your skates, and when it came to the boat making a sharp turn, why “crack-the-whip” wasn’t in it with the flip you’d get, and it was entirely your own affair whether you slid away on your skates or on the back of your neck.

      Of course, you remember the old slide you had sprinkled and then polished up until it was just about the slipperiest spot in town — and usually right in the path of the greatest pedestrian traffic (and if it had a slant, so much the better, as it was easier to keep going once you got started) and then some old curmudgeon would come along with a can of ashes and spoil the whole shooting-match, with the curt admonition, “What’s the matter with you kids; do you want to break your bloomin’ necks?” And who never paid any attention to your very pertinent rejoinder, “We wasn’t hurtin’ anything; guess they are our own necks, ain’t they?”

      Some activities like ice boating eventually did disappear while others like tobogganing became the property only of children. The hardships of the winter of 1912 were quickly forgotten as people got on with life in the big cities of the land.

      In a few short years young men would be off to a war from which many would never return, and for survivors those lost years were in many cases made up by finally turning their backs on that residue of memory of seasonal discomfort that their parents, grandparents, and themselves as children had once embraced.

      Fred Grant recalled what had been lost:

      Those old sleighing parties provided many an evening’s happy enjoyment. Their objective was usually out into the country to some farmer’s home, where part of the evening would be spent in a social dance, or “parlour games” in the case of younger people making up the party, and to “thawing out” before taking the couple of hours return trip.