First it was the palm trees, then it was the moose, and now the latest icon to disappear from the southern Ontario environment is the snow.

Okay, that bit about the palm trees is a bit of a stretch, but I am right about the snow and moose. To those doubters in our midst, I can only ask when is the last time you saw a moose on the boardwalk, or for that matter, a mantle of snow on the Leuty Lifesaving Station.

That is a question that would challenge the memory of even the oldest of our residents. And don’t try to give me a hard time about that assertion, because I am one of them.

I realize I have written about this subject before but somebody’s got to put the heat on the matter, because the next thing you know men and women of a certain age will be touring our elementary schools telling them all about that stuff that Grampy used to talk about. Of course the youngsters won’t believe a word of it, but they don’t believe any of the wisdom that us kindly, decent older folk are eager to pass along – but don’t get me started on that.
And the worst part about it all is that the pure white substance that was once greeted with glad cries is now attacked with threshing machines or flame throwers or other implements commonly found in garages all over the city.

Mark my words, the day is not far distant when hordes of bright-eyed schoolchildren will be taken to museums and shown snowmen made of white plastic standing on a surface of artificial ice, then they will be ushered into another room and taught how to make snowballs.

In my day nobody taught you how to make snowballs because it wasn’t necessary. With the advent of the first proper snowfall, you rushed outside, and propelled by an atavistic* impulse, you made a snowball. Then if a girl passed by, another atavisitic impulse kicked in and you threw it at her. After she dusted the snow off of her woolly cap, an atavistic impulse of her own kicked in, and she told the teacher who gave you the strap and compelled you to stay after school and clean off the blackboards. With your tongue.

I am going to stop writing about this situation because there are only so many columns that can be written about on the subject, especially since there has been so little of this winter and also because my editor tends to get a little testy whenever I write too frequently on one particular subject.

But I do not want to shift gears without recounting an experience I had several winters ago when I was still reporting at what was then CFTO-TV. It was a particularly cold winter and I had been dispatched with a camera crew to do some warm weather stories in Costa Rica. On my way back, I was standing in line at the customs counter, when I heard the person before me tell the customs official that he didn’t know what cold was until he had spent the winter in her home state of Wisconsin. Then she turned and asked me where I lived and I replied in a polite but firm tone of voice, because that is the Canadian way, “Canada.”

Upon hearing that, the woman recoiled in horror and immediately donned an alpaca jacket she had been holding, in the belief I suppose, that I had somehow managed to bring some of our frigid climate with me on the flight down. I must tell you in all sincerity that her horrified reaction left me with a feeling of pride as if I were a member of a hardy group of people who could take all that winter had to throw our way and still come up smiling. And I daresay that most Canadians feel the same about our usually unforgiving climate.