Canadians have many good reasons to love wonderful winter, says the Toronto Canada Farmers’ Sun, December 8, 1893, in the following item.
There is no country on the face of the globe where the advent of the cold season is more enthusiastically welcomed than in Canada. Those of us who are in the enjoyment of good health, are actively employed and derive a fair living from our industry, cannot but enjoy a change from the enervating heat of summer to the exhilarating cold of winter. The very air of these wintry days is a tonic that increases the circulation, strengthens the lungs of healthy persons and benefits the whole system. To business men the season of frost, snow and sleighing is especially welcome. It sets sluggish trade in motion at an accelerated pace, it increases the exchange of products, it encourages capital, it adds to the employment of labour.
Only to the poor is the cold weather a bane, and for their sake the expense of living should be brought down to the lowest possible notch…. To everybody else, who can wear plenty of warm clothes, who stands not over the [hot air] register or hugs the stove, who can take a good, brisk walk daily, who curls or skates, or indulges in other winter enjoyments, the Canadian winter has many positive charms that are denied the people who vegetate in the tropics and semi-tropics, and eke out a sluggish existence, rarely knowing what it is to have a hearty appetite. Let us pride ourselves on the fact that we have this North land for our home, and if we are ever tempted to think ill of it, let us reflect that the Northern races rule the civilized world, and that whatever the disadvantages of frost and snow, they are of inestimable value in building up a sturdy manhood and in enabling us to reap from the soil the very best of the hardy food products that enter into the bone and sinew of the nation.
When December comes, Jack Frost is always welcome in the Dominion.
Unfamiliar Canadian history stories 075