I Remember Snow

February 4, 2016 | Bill V.

I feel old -- I remember winters with snow.

I remember shovelling, sledding, street hockey, epic recess snowball fights, wet boots, snowsuits, snow angels, sucking on roof icicles, snow forts & igloos and tongues-stickin-to-metal dares.

I remember my brother John flooding our backyard and making an ice rink. I remember my husband R making me hot chocolate. I remember warming my hands at the fire. I remember hockey games at the local arena Saturday mornings in Richmond Hill. I remember the winter storm of 1999 and the endless shovelling. I remember falling through the ice in the our backyard creek, getting a soaker and some motherly compassion the first time and then some punishment when I did it three more times the same day. I remember winter bumper jumping the chrome backs of cars.

Several other blogs have done great posts on vintage winter photos of Toronto:

Just to jog your own memory of winter and snow please enjoy the following vintage photos from Toronto Public Library's Digital Archive.

1867 albumen photo of Major Higginson's sleigh at New Fort Barracks (Exhibition Place) Toronto.

1870s Looking south down Yonge Street from King Street near Wellington (Noverre Brothers Photographer).

Brockville snowshoe club, February 20th, 1885 (Murray & Son photographer).

Niagara Falls circa 1890 (notice the tiny people at bottom left for scale).

1890 Robert Millen house on west side of Bay Street, south of Albert Street (notice the kids in the window and imagine how cold single pane and wooden homes would have been).

Post 1899 fire, Gowans, Kent & Co., wholesale crockery & glassware shop, Front St. East, north side, between Yonge & Scott Street, Toronto, Ont.

1900 Hockey Don Flats (Riverdale Park).

Circa 1900 tobogganing in Riverdale Park (facing east up to Broadview, Don Jail on right).

Circa 1900 Paterson Brothers General Store Dawes Road and Danforth, Little York, winter delivery sleighs (notice the coal sleigh lower left).

Circa 1900 Queen Street East between Church and Sherbourne, showing horse sleigh vs electric snow plow on tram lines.

Gordon Playter (son of John L. Playter) on dog sled, near present Jackman Ave.

1905 Homewood looking north to Wellesley (Henry James Carter photographer).

1908 High Park, Grenadier Pond - what's old is new - remember the recent controversy about skating on the pond in 2014?

1911 Davisville Hockey Club -- back row: unidentified, R. Watt, R. Dean, Tom? Mead, 2. unidentified, S. Muston; front row: J. Holden, A. Woodhouse, C. Brennand. Clarence Brennand was a long-time teacher at North Toronto Collegiate.

1922 December carting snow from downtown Toronto streets - Yonge Street looking north, between King and Queen. Imagine the back-breaking nature of this manual work.

1925 High Park: a crowd of merry-makers surrounding the sleigh of Ralph Connable.

Ice in the Humber River, March 1929.

1920s Mervin / Frieda Jones / Bill Jones on Skating Rink, Eglinton Park, Eglinton Ave. West between Edith Drive & Oriole Parkway (looking east to rear of houses on Edith Drive, Roselawn Ave. at left).

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