Hockey on frozen slough, east of Viking, Alberta, 1912.
Winter has now become more than a season. It is a window into the future. It is reflected on an almost daily basis in the glaciers and ice fields and snow-packed mountains and backyard rinks and even the permafrost in Arctic wilderness, and the penguins and polar bears that live in the dark and cold places of the world.
Climate change, once the topic of mild concern, and then intense debate, is now acknowledged to be an increasing threat to survival, or at least to our ability to live within reasonably tolerant levels of heat and frost.
How we deal with that challenge will define our place in the world for centuries, and along with that, a world in which winter is commonplace rather than a rare experience. Human willingness to confront this challenge is at least partly based on our ability to look back at what once so enflamed passions and created a distinct national identity.
It is easy to forget the glories of what once was, and instead take for granted as both inevitable and normal, our experience of the world today and into the future.
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.
TWO How Winter Has Shaped Canadian Identity from Literature to Art
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.
Winter is not simply one of four seasons to a Canadian. It’s not merely the time separating fall from the spring. It’s much more. Winter in Canada is a force. Its power has made Canadians who they are, in the same way the Declaration of Independence defines Americans and soccer-playing connotes the Brazilians. It’s what we’re known for whether we like it or not. Take winter away and would we still be Canadians? Perhaps our own self-image would adjust, but the rest of the world might have trouble responding to this lost cliché.
Robertson Davies claimed that “cold breeds caution,” suggesting not too subtly the relationship between the winter climate and the psyche of Canadians as a whole. Canada is in a winterized state for a major part of the calendar year. In certain areas of Canada, winter is extreme, debilitating, and fierce. The calendar definition of the season running from just before Christmas through late March is one of the more misleading markers. Davies argues that because of the cold climate Canadians are perhaps more cynical and paranoid. This receives added credence in the way it contributes to the Canadian desire to separate themselves from Americans.
The blending of American and Canadian cultures has become more pronounced in recent years. Canadians are offended by this development and rely on critical sustenance for their ability to differentiate themselves from Americans by virtue of being winter warriors.
This bond between Canada and winter is best described by French-Canadian singer Gilles Vigneault, who succinctly remarked, “My country’s not a country, it’s winter.” His country, however, was not necessarily Canada. It is symptomatic of the complex nature of Canadian identity that Vigneault is described as a poet, publisher, singer-songwriter, and well-known Quebec nationalist and sovereignist.
So, no sooner do Canadians find an artist who expresses his people’s attitude to their relationship with winter then he disavows his interest in such an identity.
Still, Canadians wear this relationship between themselves and climate as a badge of honour. Canadians travelling abroad check into international hostels with maple leaves attached to their backpacks and proudly tell a traveller from Spain, “If I can take a Canadian winter, I can certainly rough it in this hostel.” The Canadian then proudly annoys his indifferent host by describing his survival of major snowfalls. His host, on the other hand, wonders why he can find nothing to say about Canada’s cuisine or its major musical artists.
Canadians have no choice. They embrace the frigid winters as something that makes them unique. Blinding snow, extreme windchill, freezing rain, and blizzards are hazards they tolerate every year, something that is foreign to the majority of other countries. A Canadian traveller would be at a loss if someone checked into the same hostel and was from Iceland. They would feel somewhat emasculated.
Horse racing on a frozen river.
American comedic writer Dave Barry famously wrote: “The problem with winter sports is that — follow me closely here — they generally take place in winter.” Canadians, however, embrace winter sports because for far too many months there simply is no other choice.
Of course, a Canadian could declare a disaffection with the season and many do by fleeing south during its harsher months, but in so doing there’s a sneaking suspicion that they must be less than a “real Canadian.” Winter culture surrounds Canadians, telling them that hockey, snowmobiling, and ice fishing are their activities. Basketball may have been created by a Canadian, but being a basketball fan does not make you a Canadian. Basketball is now too connected with American culture to qualify as Canadian.
Canadians must embrace their sports to be truly genuine, and they do, but, of course, with a caveat that it is what is expected of them. The outsider will quickly know they are in Canada once they turn on a television and investigate the country’s sports stations. Two will be showing hockey games, a third will have aging veterans of the game talking about hockey games and prattling on about how necessary fighting is to the game’s definition, while a fourth station will be showing a curling match.
Those from other countries are of course baffled by this strange cultural abnormality. A caller to a Geneva, Switzerland, sports talk show in the year 2000, having spent some time in Canada watching television, inquired of the bemused host whether Canadian parents, as a rite of passage for children, removed all their child’s front teeth before putting them into the game as the loss was inevitable in any case. The host was unable to contradict this apparent European urban myth.
The most promising basketball tandem in Toronto in the early twenty-first century, featuring the mercurial Vince Carter and his cousin Tracy McGrady, was broken up by McGrady’s protest that he needed to get out of Canada because not only was the American sports station ESPN not available but its alternative, TSN, only covered curling — hour after hour of Vic Rauter proclaiming the mystery of draws, and rocks, and buttons, which McGrady found culturally baffling. The promise of a National Basketball Association dynasty in Toronto was thus shattered by the country’s bizarre winter sports fixation.
From childhood, young boys in the long winters have little choice but to embrace the games of ice and snow. There are few facilities that can accommodate children playing football or baseball indoors during the long winter months, so thousands of children travel to the closest rink, or to a frozen pond or homemade rink, and join their friends.
It’s