From Toboggans to Carioles: Jolly Winter Fun in Old Canada

A horse-drawn sleigh waits near St. James's Club on Dorchester Street in Montreal, circa 1875. CP Photo

Commentary

Winters in Old Canada were, for most people, one long playtime. The fields, rivers, and the ports of Montreal and Quebec being frozen and blanketed in snow, the natural course of the seasons forced many to take months off work.

“Winter in Canada is the season of general amusement,” wrote Anglo-Irish writer Isaac Weld after touring the country in 1795. “The clear frosty weather no sooner commences, than all thoughts about business are laid aside, and every one devotes himself to pleasure. … At Montreal, in particular it appears then as if the town were inhabited but by one large family.”

A solid layer of snow made the roads, pitted and potholed for much of the year, smooth, hard, and dry in cold weather. Transportation by land was thus far more comfortable, as the great chronicler of old Montreal, Edgar Collard, wrote in one of his collections. An Anglo-Montrealer observed in 1833 that thanks to “the severity of the cold … the worst roads are converted into the best … Indeed a mild winter is regarded as a great calamity by the Canadians.”

For the same reason, the first governors general after Confederation in 1867 faced a most uncomfortable ride to their office in the East Block on Parliament Hill. The roads they had to take from Rideau Hall—Princess Avenue, Sussex Drive, and Wellington Street—were scarred by potholes, except in the winter when snow filled and smoothed them. Indeed Lord Monck, the first viceroy, hated the ruts so much that during the summers he commuted to the Hill by six-oared boat to the mouth of the Rideau Canal.

“The River Road” by Cornelius Krieghoff, 1855. Public Domain

Cornelius Krieghoff’s paintings of rural life are belittled by some as chocolate box art. It’s a status he shares with acknowledged greats like Renoir, Constable, and Degas. But regardless, Krieghoff’s landscapes and snowscapes are a marvellous and presumably accurate window into Old Quebec. The oil paintings show something of the “frolic and jollity” that Isaac Weld described in words. The artist’s subjects, even when caught in an accident, seem to be having so much fun!

For one thing, the accoutrements of winter travel were much more romantic than day-to-day travel today. Wrapped in their bright clothing, plus buffalo, bear, and deer skins, extra stockings, and fur caps, families went visiting from house to house for food, drink, dance, and sporting activities.

A 19th-century Canadian cariole. Public Domain

The cariole was low to the ground and drawn by one or two horses. And they were fast as well as charming to the eye and ear. Weld wrote: “The rapidity of the motion, and the sound of these bells and horns, appears to be very conducive to cheerfulness, for you seldom see a dull face.” It is easy to focus on the inconveniences of pre-industrial life, but it’s well attested that communities accustomed to hardship and fewer luxuries tend nevertheless to be happier. It’s something to do with oxytocin and the dynamics of bonding.

The setting was important too. Their way through unspoiled countryside was lit by glorious starry skies undimmed by light pollution. Some today describe city lights as a great human tragedy because they deprive urban dwellers of the most glorious sight known to mankind. (I remember a Master Corporal who said, having grown up in Toronto, “I never saw stars in the night sky,” until he spent a summer for army reserve training in Meaford on Georgian Bay, 186 kilometres to the north.)

A couple tobogganing circa 1900. CP Photo

Soldiers of the British garrison in Montreal in the early 1860s adopted sleighing too, eligible bachelor officers going about with the Montreal girls who were known—in the slightly cringeworthy language of the time—as “muffins.” A muffin, one newspaper explained, “is simply a lady who sits beside the male occupant of a sleigh,” alternatively, “crumpets” or “scones.” Sleighing was made all the sweeter by winter picnics, house-calling, band performances, firelit dinners, and dancing.

Later, the men who served as Governor General in Ottawa, together with their family, aides-de-camp, and staff, carried on these traditions, making the most of the rural winter idyll. Lord and Lady Monck spent their first winter in Rideau Hall (originally a rental, a temporary residence) in 1866, before Confederation.

Ottawa then still had the vibe (as the kids say) of a lumber town and there wasn’t much social life. One way to pass the long hours, take the air, and get to know the countryside was to go for long sleigh rides. The Moncks and their successors sponsored and hosted many winter sports on the grounds of Rideau Hall, and these eventually included snowshoeing, tobogganing, skating, and curling. Evenings were filled with dinners, theatrical performances, balls, and other musical occasions.

Princess Patricia of Connaught and Major-General F.F. Worthington at Rideau Hall's skating rink in 1914. Public Domain

Lord Dufferin, the third viceroy, added at his own expense a $1,624.95 enclosed curling rink to the east of Government House alongside the skating rink, and beyond it, the giant toboggan slide two metres wide and 40 metres long, drawing crowds from all over town to bomb down its 45-degree slope at 64 kilometres per hour. Lady Dufferin, quoted in R.H. Hubbard’s illustrated history of Rideau Hall and its occupants, described the toboggan slide as follows:

“The new slide is most exciting, for, the natural hill not being considered sufficiently steep, a great addition has been made to it. A long flight of stairs now leads to the top of a high wooden slide, and, as this is almost perpendicular [only at the top, of course], the toboggan starts a rapid rate down it — and its occupant has both the length and the excitement of his slide greatly increased. To-day the wooden part of the slide is a sheet of ice, so the toboggans rush down at a tremendous pace.”

Princess Louise, a daughter of Queen Victoria, came to Canada as the spouse of the fourth Governor General, the Marquess of Lorne. And so the Royal Standard flew over Rideau Hall in place of the traditional modified Union Jack that served as the earliest viceregal flag. Her Royal Highness wrote:

“The toboggan slide and vicinity fairly blossoms with the merry, romping company. Surplus dignity is thrown to the winds, along with streamers of ribbons, tassels, and bright-hued scarfs. A pretty Canadian girl never looks prettier than when clad in her cloak made of a fleecy white blanket. A red or blue tuque [sic] perched coquettishly upon her abundant hair … and a bright colored skirt just showing between her cloak and moccasined feet. Put a toboggan and two or three beaux at her disposal, and she is happy,” as we read in Mr. Hubbard’s history.

Today, the curling rink at Rideau Hall has disappeared. The great toboggan run has also vanished—though the little hill it stood on remains visible from the guard hut used by the Governor General’s Foot Guards nearer the house. The last remaining visible public winter activity on the grounds of Government House today is the skating rink, usually open to the public in the first two months of the year.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.