WINTER SPORTS IN CANADA.
Winter undoubtedly has its hygienic value; and a part of this value we get without effort. It is not only a comfort to be freed from the annoyances of insect life, but it is also a gain for health that many of the atmospheric impurities are removed by frost. But to get the largest value from winter as a frost cure, we need to avail ourselves of the system of healthful and invigorating amusements which prevail in Canada, and have made that country famous. That portion of our population which is employed out-doors in winter is, pro tanto, undoubtedly the most healthy. For the rest of us the only possible equivalent is winter sports. It is unfortunately true that the variable character of our weather precludes us from exact imitation; but our inventive genius ought to be equal to the task of bridging over the soft places in our winters. In Canada, the long and comparatively equable winter makes it a simple thing to provide healthy and innocent amusements which may be enjoyed as regularly as any business is carried on. It is not to be forgotten, however, that the Canadians are the only people in the world who know how to keep warm out-doors as well as in-doors. They have learned to perfection this art, for lack of which our out-door employments are more or less dangerous. Our laborer does not keep warm in winter, and his “colds” become consumption. In Canada, young girls accomplish in this respect what stout men fail to do among us; they keep warm whether they are flying in sleighs or on toboggans. These forms of enjoyment are well organized; there are toboggan clubs, and “society” means some form of winter sport. The miserable imitation called “roller-skating,” which is alarming thoughtful people in many of our villages, is only a craze, a temporary insanity; the winter sports of Canada are a national institution. The physical and moral wholesomeness of the roller-skating rink is more than doubtful. The moral and physical healthfulness of the sports by which Canadians make winter a season of joy, can not be questioned.
On the average, our winter in the United States is not a healthful and invigorating season to us. We lose the greater values and expose ourselves to special dangers. We live in-doors, with a temperature ten degrees too high. We shut in with us invisible plagues which breed diphtheria and other diseases. We are enfeebled by refraining from exercise and breathing unwholesome air in our houses. We come to the spring weaker than we were when winter began. We have moped by hot fires and breathed vitiated air, when we ought to have been out in the winter blast, using our muscles and filling our lungs with the clean winds. Two or three conditions seem wanting for a reform of these habits. One is the art of keeping warm in the cold air; another is a keener sense of the value of winter exercise, and a third is some devices by which the “soft spells” of weather shall not arrest our sports nearly every week.