20
DEC. ISSUE | ARTS & CULTURE
THE ONTARION
SELECTIONS FROM ARCHIVAL AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS
Tobogganing: More than just a fun winter sport What one American’s love affair with tobogganing can teach us about the historical and social significance of the sport GRAHAM BURT | ARCHIVES ASSOCIATE
“A winter in Canada! I think I should rather spend it there than anywhere else on the face of this broad earth.” “What! And freeze to death?” “No, old fellow, you’d have no time for freezing.” — An exchange between Harry Clay Palmer, a Chicago-based sports journalist, and a young Montrealer named Dick from The toboggan: A brief sketch of Canadian winter sports, and something as to their growing popularity in the United States.
T
he toboggan, written by Harry Clay Palmer in 1886, offers interesting insight into the history of the toboggan and its relationship to late 19th-century views of Canadian culture, athleticism, science, colonialism, and the visage of ideal womanhood. Since hockey is quintessentially (and perhaps stereotypically) known today as Canada’s premier winter pastime, it may surprise some that in the late 19th and early 20th centuries this was not the case. Rather, when people thought of Canadian winter sports, they thought of the tobog-
gan. The American Harry Palmer, a self-declared summer-loving baseball fanatic, decided to brave the cold and travel north to see what all the fuss was about. He wrote about his adventure in The toboggan. “The cold, bracing atmosphere, the exhilarating effects of ice skating, the snow-shoe tramp, the toboggan slide, the sleighing jaunt, and the score of other pastimes in which the Canadians indulge with an abandon and degree of enthusiasm I have never seen equaled ... The Canadian, it seems, is never happier than when the snow falls,” Palmer wrote, describing his first impressions of Canada soon after he arrived in Montreal. In addition, Palmer’s de-
scription of his first toboggan ride captures the essence of what many people who live in snowy climates still love about the activity today. “We shot over the polished surface of the slide with a speed that I had never before experienced,” he wrote. “And I have ridden sixty miles an hour upon a railway train on more than one occasion. To breathe was difficult; to speak was impossible. The world seemed to be suddenly sinking beneath us, and we, together with the hill behind us, seemed plunging down into eternity.” Notwithstanding some tired legs and bruised limbs — caused mostly by falling off of his toboggan after hitting numerous ‘cahots’ (bumps) on the hill — Palmer fell in love with the sport.
He even predicted that tobogganing would soon become the national winter pastime of the United States, equal in popularity to baseball, which means an awful lot coming from one of the country’s top baseball reporters of the day. Tobogganing in the late 19th century was far more than a fun winter activity. It was also a symbol of cultural and scientific progress. In his brief section on the history and etymology of the toboggan, Palmer recognizes its rich Indigenous heritage. He claims that the toboggan, which came from the Esquimaux word adabaggon, was a “primitive” invention of the “untutored red man,” who used it for thousands of years to
