Joshua Hind: Who'd have guessed that all Toronto needed was a snow day?
There’s no catch. No grim turn to this story. It was a good day, and there’s boundless relief in knowing that’s still possible.
By: Joshua Hind
The pandemic has been scary, frustrating, confusing and enraging, but in all the 20-some-odd months of COVID, the last month has arguably been the gloomiest. A collision of bad luck and dubious policy created that rarest set of situations in which absolutely no one’s happy. For many, especially parents, the light at the end of the tunnel had been the prospect of a return to in-person learning, and the shred of normality it brings for children, but even that hope of relief hasn’t been universally shared. Some parents still plan to keep their kids home rather than risk exposure to Omicron.
With a swirling vortex of glumness dragging us down you’d be forgiven for thinking nothing short of a miracle could break us free.
Turns out, all we needed was a snow day.
On Monday, the day schools in Ontario were set to re-open, a massive, once-in-a-generation blizzard intervened. The tremendous storm dumped at least 30 centimetres of snow on Toronto before dawn and kept going throughout the day. It was the largest storm of its kind since 1999, when then-mayor Mel Lastman called in the army to shovel and spawned a million jokes, many of which are repeated to this day in the rest of Canada every time Toronto gets a flurry.
I remember the 1999 storm. I’d moved to Toronto the year before and on that particular morning I had to take the streetcar from Long Branch, at the westernmost edge of Toronto, to the downtown core for work. We made it about halfway without much trouble, but then we encountered a car that had parked a little too far out in the street, blocking the streetcar. So, what did we do? Give up? Nah. A group of us got off the streetcar and pushed the car out the way, deeper into the snowbank along the curb. Then we did it again. And again. That’s how we slowly made our way downtown, clearing our own path as we went. As members of our group arrived at their stops, we’d high five, and the others on the streetcar who weren’t able to push would give them rounds of applause.
That day, working with strangers to help other strangers get to work before dawn in a blizzard is one of my clearest, dearest memories.
Now, 23 years later, the snow came again. But it’s a different world now, or so we’re frequently told. People are harder and more self-involved, and two years of unremitting crisis may have worsened that condition. Was this storm going to be just one more bleak thing?
As I got dressed on Monday at about 7 a.m., I mused on Twitter that I wasn’t sure if I should get out in the mess and do a first round of shovelling or wait for the snow to stop.
But it was a rhetorical question as I heard my father’s voice in my head reminding me that it’ll only get heavier if I wait. So out I went. An hour and a half later, I’d done our driveway, the sidewalk (three times, the snow filling in as fast I could remove it), and both neighbours’ walks too. By then my kids were awake too.
I know it’s falling out of favour to say kids are resilient, but I think that’s often because adults are uncomfortable with the idea that kids are handling things better than they are. After all, we’re adults! But kids are resilient, and we’ve worked hard in our house to keep things positive, but even so when they saw the snow it was like the burst of light from a newly lit match. They were elated.
The decision to give them the day off from virtual school, which had been announced in lieu of the pre-empted return to class, was simple. You don’t waste a once-in-20-year snowstorm on online school, or any school for that matter. I’ve heard speculation that “virtual school” might mean the end of snow days. Maybe so, ghastly as that idea sounds, but it wouldn’t be so that day.
The kids played outside for hours. Three complete shovelings’ worth, if measured in blizzard time. They dug tunnels, made forts, and created an entire world (which they dubbed “Castle Stuck”, y’know … because we’re all stuck at home) in the high snowbanks. (Fuelled perhaps by a bit of childlike energy myself, I’d resolved during the morning’s first shovel to create the biggest piles I could for them.)
They were happier than they’d been in ages. And it wasn’t just kids who felt it.
By mid-afternoon my Twitter feed was full of stories of people helping. In my neighbourhood and across the city people came out of their homes to lend each other a hand. And when they helped, they talked. It’s possible that more random social interactions happened today than have happened since March 2020. It was surreal. Even the birds seemed to sense something was up. My feeder was more active than it had been in weeks.
And to my great delight, the spirit of my snowy streetcar trip two decades lives on: video of people pushing a stuck bus up Jane St. in Toronto’s west end made its ways across the social networks.
Day stretched into evening, the sledding hills were full, and spirits remained high.
And now, at the time of writing, my kids are lying in bed still chatting about the day’s adventure, and the most incredible thing is that the other shoe hasn’t dropped. There’s no catch. No grim turn to this story. It was a good day, and there’s boundless relief in knowing that’s still possible.
That happy buzz is also a reminder, by contrast, that we’re not just stuck in a COVID pandemic, but also a pandemic of pessimism. Not that we can be blamed, we’ve been expected to stay on our toes for so long we could all try out for the ballet. Maintaining this persistent state of “emergency” (a word that is rapidly losing all meaning) has kept our anxieties on a low simmer for far too long. But it is on us, as people, to get ourselves out of it. Waiting for our leaders to change enough of the things we don’t like about them before we can be happy is harder than shovelling in a blizzard and even worse for your heart.
A snow day can’t fix society’s ills, but a dose of joy does remind us that we live in a society worth fixing. In the short term, helping ourselves get out of this morass demands our leaders be less idealistic in their planning and we be less pessimistic with our reactions. Two years of existential dread hasn’t made our schools safer, our health-care system more robust, or rooted out inequality, but those things can be done, though only by us and only if we’re of a mind to do them. And I understand why people push back on the idea that we’re responsible for addressing big problems ourselves, because the pandemic and our pitiable leadership has at times made all of us feel powerless, for one reason or another, but we’re no less capable and certainly no less powerful than the centuries of people who endured far tougher times than these.
It’ll be hard work but we can do it … starting Wednesday. Tuesday’s just been declared another snow day.
Joshua Hind is a designer, project manager and writer based in Toronto. Follow Joshua on Twitter at @joshuahind.
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This was just the post I needed today. Thanks for the smile and that note of optimism.
A testimony to the human spirit. Thank you for this wonderful start to my day. I will be sharing it.