Now and then

It may be surprising, but winter has not changed significantly in the last half century.

Born in Grand Falls in 1935, Wilf Howse said winters haven't changed a lot since he was a boy, however, listen to his stories and you can see some changes have occurred over the years.

He said weather-wise, winters in Grand Falls-Windsor are the same as years gone by - every year was different. He said the only difference was when he was young, roads were rarely plowed.

"There was only one tractor in town and that took a week to get around after a big snowstorm," Mr. Howse said. "In the meantime, with everybody walking, all the snow would be trampled down in half a day anyway and you would be walking on this foot-high packed down snow on the streets and it would be like that all the winter. You could slide all winter then until the spring came."

He said some winters were colder, some were milder, but really that is no different than the present winters.

He said he can even remember people playing golf on the golf course on New Year's Day once or twice in his lifetime.

"Other times the first of December you couldn't find the golf course," he said. "Some years there was a lot of snow, some years it was the same as now except now we have equipment to cope with it. "Now you get the roads plowed and the streets salted and you have pavement all winter long," he said. "We never had that."

Mr. Howse said unlike the present, school was never canceled because of weather in his school days.

"Maybe if you were in Kindergarten your mother would look out and decide it was too stormy for you to go," he said. "Even if it was closed you couldn't get the message out so all the kids went to school anyway and you couldn't turn around and walk back home again."

He said as for after school and weekend winter activities, sliding on the streets was the most popular among children.

"I can remember 100 kids on Spurrell's Hill or any hill in town used to be blocked with kids," he said.

Then there was road hockey, Mr. Howse said. Children could play road hockey all day long and might see one car pass by. He added they didn't have to worry about moving hockey nets out of the road, they just had a couple Carnation Milk cans stuck in the snow, or a couple lumps of ice.

Mr. Howse said winters as a child were enjoyable.

"When you are a kid everything is enjoyable," he said. "The bigger the snowstorm the better we liked it."

He added almost everyone had woodsheds back then and after a big snowstorm would hit, children would climb up on the woodsheds and jump off into the snow.

He added another outdoor activity was skating on the pond where the water treatment plant is now, on ditches around town or puddles of water.

"I was 13 when the stadium opened," he said. "When that opened and you could go skating on an artificial ice, we were millionaires then. You could go in on a Saturday afternoon skating for 10 cents for two hours."

He said there were so many children around that each street in town had its own group and would have snowball fights.

"The boys on Junction Road had a snowball fight with the boys on Monchy Road that would last for hours," he said.

Mr. Howse said families are smaller now and there aren't as many kids around as there were when he was in school.

"Kids were everywhere and you had to get out of the house in the winter because there wasn't enough room in the house," he said. "The only thing we could do was listen to the radio and we only had one radio station then."

He said skiing wasn't as big when he was a child and only about half a dozen people actually owned a pair of skis. But when he was a boy, him and his friends would go down behind the stores and look for empty pork barrels on the loading docks.

"We asked the worker could we have them," Mr. Howse said. "He would say 'No' but when we put a sad look on our face and begged he would finally look around and say, 'Take one boys but I never gave it to you.'

He said they would roll the pork barrel up over the hills and to his house, would beat the head off the barrel and would end up with 12- or 14-barrel staves.

"And you had six pairs of skis for you and your buddies for all winter," he said, adding with a piece of rope for straps and that was their skis.

Also, around Christmas time, Mr. Howse said., a lot of families would put down new floor canvas for Christmas.

"So we would get the old stuff and that was wonderful for sliding down the hills," he said. "It had a draw back. The draw back was in the cold weather the floor canvas got brittle and every time you came down the hill pieces broke off and with each ride it was getting smaller and smaller. I can remember looking back at Spurrell's hill and the whole hill would be littered with pieces of floor canvas."

Present day

Jason Thistle also grew up in Grand Falls and is now raising a family of his own in the community. He also said there are no differences in winter activities from when he was growing up to now.

"It's the same old, same old going on in Grand Falls-Windsor," Mr. Thistle said, adding outdoor activities are still of interest.

He said there were a lot of backyard rinks and skating on ponds and pits, activities that are still happening today.

Mr. Thistle said with the many new technological advances in present day society, it keeps children from being outside.

"Kids are so tied up with Wii and Nintendo and DS and Game Boy, it's really a tough job to get them unglued from that and get them outside," Mr. Thistle said. "I think we did spend more time outside as children in our generation than kids do today because of the technology aspect.

"It's a big effort to get the kids outside now because they are attached to all these things, but once they get out, they always have a better time than if they stayed in the basement playing video games."

He added snowmobiling is still possibly one of the most popular winter activities in the area.

"That's something we do with our kids a lot on the weekends," he said. "I think a lot of people do that as well - take off to the cabin or get together with a bunch of other couples and their kids and make a day somewhere. Go have a fire and a cook up and have a nice day outdoors."

Mr. Thistle added sliding was, and is, still a popular winter sport.

"The big one for us years ago was always hospital hill," he said. "Kids still go there but a lot of younger kids now go to Church Road Park.

"I think the primary activities are still in place, nothing has changed," he said.

Mr. Thistle said when the snow comes his five-year-old daughter Summer and eight-year-old daughter Sophia come home after school and jump into their snowsuits.

"I usually pile up a big lump of snow on the end of the lawn from the tractor and they are out playing in that and making snow forts and sometimes when we get enough snow we'll go out and make a snow cave or make a little cabin or something and go out and have hot chocolate in the snow fort," he said. "They are pretty good at make believing."

He said the family also snowshoes together and backyard fires are also big in the present day.

"We do that a lot in the winter time," he said. "We go out in the evening and make a fire and probably have marshmallows, hot chocolate and wieners. The kids are out playing around and a lot of the times we fill up empty Windex containers with coloured water in them and they will go playing around with that."

Mr. Thistle said once winter actually starts in Grand Falls-Windsor, a lot of people go to their cabins for the weekend so by 4 p.m. on Friday, the town is empty.

"It's family time," he said. "In today's society, especially outside of Newfoundland, kids don't spend enough time with their parents and that's good quality time on the weekends. It is memories they'll have forever."