The Globe and Mail

Finally, winter, if only for an hour or two, snow whipping horizontally across the hilly streets of St. John's. Canada's rules of blizzard driving quickly come into play: Don't halt at stop signs as you're riding up hills -- which, in the old city, is a lot of the time. Just look and check and then keep going, rather than spinning your wheels, and be glad you're not on the deck of some old sealer. The next morning, the snowfall had ended (a pity that), and we were back to the new Canadian winter: mild and forgiving and likely to be washed away with rain in no time. The skies were a clear blue, and as I walked by the old Bishop Feild school -- the one that I know Joey Smallwood went to, because of Wayne Johnston's fine novel The Colony of Unrequited Dreams -- the kids were calling out goodbyes and their playtime plans and throwing snowballs in the streets in a way that is just not possible in the districts of cities where cars rule paramount.