ARCHIVES: White powder fun

During the holiday season Spacing will re-publish articles previously seen in our print edition. This article appeared in Spacing #3 (Work and Play), fall/winter 2004.

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On winter evenings, as you ride south on the Broadview streetcar, you skirt the edge of the Riverdale Park hill just as the skyline comes into view. As you pass by you can watch one tobogganer after another launch, almost as if the streetcar itself is knocking them off their perch. One second they’re on the edge of the sidewalk a few feet away, the next they are rocketing hundreds of feet down the hill toward the Don Valley Parkway. You’ll be at Gerrard or even Dundas by the time they manage to climb their way back up the steep slippery hill.

Play is especially important for public spaces in the winter. The simple joys of being outside — strolling, running errands, hanging around in the sun — no longer draw people out into the streets. Instead, the cold, the dark, the icy sidewalks, the mountains of ploughed snow, the necessity of piling on layers of clothing, all conspire to keep us cocooned indoors in our private spaces, leaving the city deserted.

To get people outside in the winter, you need an active draw, something that will make it worth overcoming these obstacles. You need the prospect of play. A few forms of play continue from the summer, in attenuated form — jogging, playing fetch with dogs. But the city needs more, and fortunately winter provides one advantage, a delightful characteristic that is only possible in the cold, which gives thrills the summer cannot offer — a lack of friction.

Thanks to the cold, ice and snow, we can move faster and more recklessly over the surfaces of the world, without the benefit of wheels, than we ever can in the warm days of summer. Whether skating, skiing or tobogganing, the prospect of this thrill of movement and speed is not only enough to draw us out of our homes, but it directly counteracts the obstacles of winter, making tricky surfaces work to our advantage, warming us up inside so that the crisp contrast of our body heat in the cold air gives a sparkling natural high unique to the season.

Play is always important, but in the winter it is vital. Skating rinks in our parks and squares, toboggan runs down steep banks eroded over centuries by rivers, ski trails through paths and ravines, are the only way to bring people outside, keeping the city alive during the cold depths of the season. Some spaces become even busier than in the summer, such as Nathan Phillips Square. The city is not defeated by the cold, but rather transformed. Play enables us to come to terms with winter, and even embrace it.

photo of High Park in 1912, from Toronto Archives (Fonds 1244, Item 442)
With thanks to Shawn Micallef for the opening paragraph