One day when I was a student at W.H. Morden Public School we built a snowman. This was no ordinary snowman mind you. He took all the snow from the soccer field at the side of the school, and his base was so big that it took several of us to roll it along. I don’t know how we got his middle and head hoisted up, but we did. From the classroom window, we could look out at him standing there, alone and slightly lopsided.

It really does seem that snowfalls used to be heavier. Maybe it is because just the last year or two we have had so little snow; maybe it is a permanent result of the green-house effect; maybe it is just a trick of memory. My children, should I ever have any, will never have to listen to the “I walked to school through six feet of snow” lecture, but they may have to listen to me ramble on about giant snow drifts and school closures.

Before Third Line was widened to four lanes near Hopedale Mall, the ditches along the side of the road were much deeper than the ones today. And, with a real trick of memory, I am sure, I don’t recall the whiteness of the snow being sullied by the spray of snowplows. I remember trying to walk in the ditch and feeling that I would get stuck chest deep, or maybe even be buried alive, the snow seemed so high. I recall walking to a friend’s house, and at every turn in the road I dropped into the snow-filled ditch to make snow-angels. I arrived covered in snow and sopping wet, and grinning from ear to ear. That was the day we made a gingerbread house. We followed the recipe carefully, but when it called for the mixture to be frozen, discovered there was not enough room in her mother’s fridge. So we carefully wrapped the cookie sheets of gingerbread in heavy green garbage bags and buried them in the snow for an hour. The house turned out beautifully, with a Smarties pathway, jelly bean chimney an candy cane gateway.

And before acid rain and acrid snow, we would try to catch snowflakes on our tongues. Imagine a whole schoolyard full of children, their tongues stuck out and heads turned up, bobbing and dodging for the elusive flakes.

I remember once, in the early 1970s, when there was an ice storm and school closed early. I went to look at the trees, and can still picture how they were coated with a thick, clear coat that mimicked every curve of the branches. And around 1978 the winds and snows were so fierce that everything stopped and all that could be heard was the howling wind and the tiny tap of snow being driven against the windows. Or how about the time the snow was so heavy that drifts almost covered the cars in the driveway and went halfway up the walls of the homes across the road? We took pictures to send to my grandmother in Europe, hoping to amaze her with the hardiness of life in the northern climes.

With so little snow these days, will kids ever have a chance to know the thrill, the anticipation and finger-crossing hopefulness of waking up on a white morning to find their parents listening anxiously to the radio for reports of school closings? That’s something I will tell my kids about.

Judy Wedeles
Oakville Today, Jan 26, 1989