Globe staff and readers share their memories of beloved snow days.catscandotcom/AFP/Getty Images
Whether you’re making forts, crunching through powder on snowshoes or cross-country skiing on city streets, snow days are a chance to enjoy and appreciate the winter weather we are lucky to have in Canada.
As schools close and the city slows down as the fresh powder is cleaned up, snow days can be the perfect excuse to take a brood of thrilled children to the toboggan hill, or corral neighbourhood snow lovers to resurrect Frosty the snowman from his Christmastime slumber.
We asked Globe staff and readers to share their memories of beloved snow days, and they were more than happy to oblige. Take a look, and perhaps a walk down memory lane.
The week of back to basics
“The winter of 1961 was epic in Montreal: a massive snow and ice storm paralyzed the city and knocked out the power for a week. My mother was in hospital, delivering twins, so my father and brother and I had the candlelit house to our feral selves, cooking over the fire in the living room, sleeping in a huddle in one room, living almost entirely outdoors – and no school or work for an entire week. It felt like some kind of heaven.
I have a photograph of my brother and I in our snow pants, inside; we look like children of the corn, crazed and thrilled. We were pioneers.
A week later, still building igloos and tunnels in the towering snowbanks, I lost my gloves, and dashed indoors to fetch a new pair, mindlessly turning on the light in the coat closet – and bingo, there it was again, electric light, thanks to the temporary loan of a portable generator. I didn’t even notice at first, taking it for granted. And then the sadness hit. Our adventure was over.” – Ian Brown, Globe feature writer
The slippery hitch-hike
“For teenage boys in my hometown of London, Ontario, snow days meant an opportunity to bumper jump. It was a pastime parents hated and orthodontists celebrated.
With high school closed, we would gather on suburban street corners in our Kodiak work boots and lumberjack jackets. We would wait for slow moving cars to come by – city buses were the best targets. When we spotted a vehicle with nothing but space behind it, we dashed into the road, scooched down, grabbed the back bumper and try to slide along snow-covered roads, on the heels of our boots.
A good ride lasted a few exhilarating seconds. Catch a patch of bare road and you risked landing flat on your face. I’d scream at my kids if I saw them try it after yesterday’s blizzard.” – Andrew Willis, Business Columnist
The country snow day
Pippa Norman on a snowy day.Supplied/The Globe and Mail
“Growing up on a farm in the Ottawa Valley, about a half an hour from town, snow days were frequent for us. Nevertheless, I always had a spoon under my pillow and my pajamas inside out the night before in the hopes it would help secure our school-free fate. After confirming our bus wasn’t making it down our dead-end dirt road, we would follow my mum, who stayed home with us, out to the barn to help feed the various critters and shovel some alpaca poop. In return, we would then be let loose to make snowmen, drink copious amounts of hot chocolate and race each other on snowshoes before reliably faceplanting every time.” – Pippa Norman, Innovation reporter
The bundle of joy
“Following the January 17, 2022 snow day in Toronto: my daughter was born.
My husband and I had arrived at the hospital the day before the storm, parking in a completely dry and empty parking lot. We left two days later, a family of three, with no car in sight – as it had been completely enveloped by snow!
It dropped 55 centimetres in just 15 hours, making for a top-10 single largest snowfalls in Toronto’s history. I remember that the incredible nurses who helped deliver her had to sleep overnight at the hospital, for fear of missing their shifts the next day and that my OB was stuck in traffic for five hours trying to get to Sunnybrook.
While the winds outside howled and snow swirled around as our little girl took her first breaths. It made for a very dramatic entrance.” – Fiona McLean-Carson
The show to remember
“It was snowing harder than I had ever remembered; this was the storm in 1999 when then-Toronto mayor Mel Lastman called in the army for help. But we had tickets to see The Black Crowes at a relatively small venue, The Phoenix Concert Theatre, and somehow, the show wasn’t cancelled.
We managed to make it downtown from Yonge and Lawrence, wondering the whole time if we’d be the only fans to show. We were not. The concert was a remedy; we had not trudged through all that snow, freezing our various digits, in vain.
Post-encore, which included She Talks to Angels, we re-bundled and headed back outside. After the booming rock and roll, the snowy silence of the nearly empty streets was even more magical than it had been on our way in.” – Marsha Lederman, Columnist
The snow troopers
“One of my strongest early childhood memories involves a blizzard. I was around eight or nine years old and the Lower Mainland in B.C. got hit with a big winter storm leaving us buried under several feet of snow. A seasonal virus was making its way through our house and we had run out of Tylenol so my dad and I prepared to make the almost-kilometre trek to a nearby gas station to restock.
When we opened the front door to head outside, we were faced with a wall of snow that covered most of the door opening. Thankfully, our street had been plowed so after digging out a path through our driveway, we started our walk down the middle of the street with snow drifts taller than me on either side. In the days that followed, the region was pummelled with freezing rain, coating the snow drifts in several inches of ice. My siblings and I broke holes in the ice in our yard and dug out the snow underneath to create the most epic forts.” – Danielle Webb, Deputy visuals editor
The one who made it
Dave Parkinson on a snow day.Supplied/The Globe and Mail
“In my entire childhood in Calgary, we never once had a snow day – I had never even heard the term until I moved to Ontario. Minus-30? So what. Blizzard? Stay calm and school on.
I do, however, recall one day that came close. While I was home for lunch (in my school, most kids went home for lunch every day), a severe blizzard hit. Mom dutifully bundled me up for the walk back to school, I headed out the door, took maybe 50 steps – and couldn’t see a thing. I could barely make out the tops of my boots, let alone the sidewalk. ‘I’d better go back home,’ seven-year-old me thought. I turned around. Couldn’t see a thing in that direction, either. Fifty steps from my door, I was lost in a blizzard.
I just stood there. Contemplating an impending tragic/romantic death of an Arctic explorer. Wondering if I should write a desperate last message to my loved ones in the snow.
Eventually, I turned back in the general direction of school; the winds eased slightly, the view cleared enough to see a way forward. Good enough. I trundled to school, worried that I would now certainly be late.
When I arrived, there were four other children in the classroom. And a teacher stunned that anyone had come back at all. We were rewarded with an afternoon of playing games, until the snow subsided and we were sent home early, basking in our moral and physical superiority. The few, the proud, the Great Explorers of Westgate Elementary.” – Dave Parkinson, Deputy head of newsroom development
The extended recess
“I still don’t remember why school let out at lunch. If the snow was bad enough, why were we sent to school in the first place? Whatever the reason, the student body of Humberside Collegiate Institute was not complaining. This was the dream: a snow day with all your friends already in one place. A group of us filed out in bewildered delight and made our way to Rennie Park. It was sunny, the snow was thick and crunchy on the ground, and it was the middle of the day – too early for the kind of extracurricular activities we usually pursued in that park. Instead, a wholesome game of tackle football on the downy white turf, with your correspondent quarterbacking the winning side. Snow day bliss.” – Eric Andrew-Gee, Reporter, Montreal
The day of raking it in
“When I was a kid, some 55 years ago (sigh), I had a paper route delivering the Montreal Gazette. One snowy morning, I ran into a snow removal contractor at 7 a.m. who seemed overwhelmed. He asked me if I could come back and help him clear driveways and walks after I had finished my paper route. I rushed home, got my parents’ permission (since school was cancelled), and returned to help him, shovelling snow all morning for $20, which seemed like a king’s ransom at the time. Ever since, snow days have always been magical for me.” – Michael Tansey
The Anglophone hero
“On March 4, 1971, Montreal had a horrendous blizzard. It finally blew out at about 10 p.m. and I was able to leave the office. I had a 4x4 truck with a snowplough and, putting chains on all four wheels, I headed home to Town of Mount Royal.
Weaving between abandoned cars, I stopped frequently to pick up stranded motorists. Soon there was a real party atmosphere going on back there with loud singing and peals of laughter. When a car blocked our way, the ‘crew’ jumped out and bounced it out of the way, but I could not get off Cote de Liesse or the raised Metropolitan Boulevard because the exits were all blocked with abandoned trucks until I reached Pie lX, then had to make my way back to TMR on Montreal’s snow filled streets, stopping every so often to drop off a passenger.
One of them, a Quebecois youth, approached me and in a very strong French accent and tears in his eyes, and said, ‘I never thought there were any good Anglophones in Quebec, but tonight has changed my mind.’” – Graeme Shelford