Childhood snowbanks cause flurry of feelings

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/11/2024 (378 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Every winter, when I was an elementary school student in the 1990s, we’d get a specific note stuffed into our backpacks that we were supposed to pass along to our parents.

The thrust of this note was essentially: don’t let your dumbass kids shove each other off the snowbanks on the way to or from school because they will roll into traffic and die. (I’m paraphrasing.)

I remember walking home from school on those snowbanks, seeing how long I could traverse that frozen top layer before crashing through.

They would become gross geological formations with striations of dog pee and road salt, with caves filled with glittering icicle stalactites. And then they would be made new again with every fresh snowfall.

I remember admiring the naked elms during golden hour, and wandering in from a recess spent building forts, completely snowblind.

Those scenes stick out to me vividly as being Winter in Winnipeg. Well those, and all the very many sensory nightmares endemic to the season: wet sock in boot, sliding sock in boot, snot-frozen scarf, cough-drop breath, sweaty mitten, staticky hair, itchy sweater, bunched sleeve in a different kind of sleeve. Snowpants, full stop.

I wonder if we’ll have any of those classic, massive Winnipeg snowbanks this winter. As I write this, a fine powdered-sugar layer of snow is dusting the rooftops. It is Nov. 22, and this is the first time I’ve seen actual snow since last winter.

Not that I’m complaining, exactly. I’ve never particularly loved November — NO-vember more like — until, well, now. Autumn felt like a real, full, complete season this year.

“I’ll take it,” has been my standard reply when people comment about how weird the weather has been.

“I could get used to this,” is what I mean.

But I’ve found myself feeling nostalgic for a Winnipeg winter — a true Winnipeg winter — a lot lately.

The river trail was only open for nine days last winter. January saw temperatures in the pluses and puddles on the streets; it was the third-warmest February on record.

And now, a November with leaves on trees and barely any snow and holiday decorations that look hilariously out of place. I mean, where are we, California?

November’s always been a bit of an idiosyncratic month: raging blizzards some years, unseasonably warm — as in 18 C in 2022 — others, but the prospect of a brown Christmas seems more and more possible every year.

I think I’m feeling some anticipatory grief because I’m relatively new to embracing winter. I used to actively hate it — actively resist it — until I rediscovered the beauty and joy in it.

I didn’t get to go on the river trail at all last year. Who knows if I will this year?

And I wonder what a changing climate will eventually mean for our civic identity.

Who are we without those bone-chilling, character-building windchills?

Who are we if the air doesn’t hurt our face?

Who are we if we’re not Winterpeg?

Of course, there’s a lot of mythology about a Winnipeg winter, mythology we work hard to uphold. It’s never actually been -50 C here, for example, despite what people like to say — or even what they say they remember.

Those snowbanks of my childhood were real, though. At least I think they were.

A lot of those elms I used to admire are gone now, however, and I wonder how long until all of it is just a blurry memory of a season that used to have sharper edges.

jen.zoratti@winnipegfreepress.com