Winter is a skate-freeze zone.

All this layering of snow, ice, rain and sleet that we're having today in southern Ohio puts me in mind of my early years in Toronto, where you could count on snow (because we were sitting on the north end of a Great Lake).

Toboggan. Toboggan comes from two Micmac words (or Algonquin, depending on the internet source), probably meaning "tow' and "bogging", as in "I hate towing this sled uphill. It's always boggin' down. Here! It's your turn." (The native peoples were noted for saying a great deal in very few words.) Ultimately, the tow-person would try toboggan (Noo Joizy or Noo Yawk infinitive form) with the passenger person to get him or her to drag the heavy, icy thing back to the top of the hill so they could have another thrilling six-second slide.

One winter Tronna had a blizzard that deposited snow half-way up our front door, itself elevated by a porch that was about four feet tall. Dad diligently got out and shovelled the front steps, building a huge pile that eventually came to about the height of the front door. On this, OB and I sledded, tobogganed and generally launched ourselves into space.

Someone took movies of the entire act, so it's much easier to remember that OB and I had snowsuits with snow helmets that had earlaps that were made of the scratchiest available material. I think they sold this same liner to the quartermaster at the cadet corps in our high school to make uniforms. At any rate, these helmets were tied under the chin, usually by a parent in such as manner that almost precluded its removal after the events of the day were over.

The other Great White North experiences were (when we were older and more self-reliant), skating at the public rink a couple of blocks away, and sliding down the huge hill at the High School a couple of blocks away. And if that failed, there was a lesser hill in the public school yard across from our house. All very convenient and alluring.

Ah! The odor of wet mittens and scarves that were redolent of the stockyard. Even more rank was the scent of the kids who vigorously played hockey on the public rink despite the prohibition and the presence of a boarded rink on the same site, as they sat smoking, swearing and impressing no one except me in the heated change room, with its memorial carvings of initials in the wooden benches. Seemed to me those guys were permanently on the bench. I only saw them on the ice in their boots, walking home. But they stuck their sticks vertically in the snowbanks as they entered the smokehouse change room, so I, for one, believed heartily in their athletic prowess.

There wasn't much worse than getting snow in your boots and having to walk home, except, perhaps, getting snow down your skates, and continuing to circle the ice to the scratchy 78 rpm rendering of "The Skaters' Waltz" on a single loudspeaker despite the obvious chilblains developing in your unprotected toes. After all, skates in those days were unforgiving leather boots with long, fat laces that would break at the slightest sign of strain. Not like those pampered hockey players personal form-fitting boots that let them play barefoot.