I probably shouldn’t have looked. There are a lot more hills than show on the map, and we all know that. Some of them only live in my memory, but they are still there. Although many seem to have gotten smaller somehow.
I spent a lot of time going down hill when I was younger. The toboggan was the usual form of transportation. A very few had those new fangled crazy carpets. There was even someone who had a home built bob sled, which was sort of cool. It actually worked. But those old style sleds with the steel runners? Pretty much useless.
You pretty much needed ice to run a sled over. They’d dig into the snow and just sit there, which reduced the fun factor by quite a bit.
And it was always quite exciting when someone got a new appliance. Sure, the household in question might be really excited about the new washer of refrigerator, but meantime, all of us kids would be running down the street, dragging the cardboard box to the nearest snow covered hill. It might not last a long time, but it sure was fun.
But usually, it was the toboggan. And, of course, someone had to take an old candle from home, so we could wax our rides to make them go faster. I don’t think this really worked, but in our heads we went faster.
Then there were the jumps. It was always great if the hill you were using had an old rock wall or hump somewhere. Maybe not really high, but just high enough to fly over. Although there was always the ability to drag in large quantities of snow from just off the hill and build our own mounds to catch some air.
But very few of the places I flew down as a much younger person would show up on that Atlantic Tobogganing Map you can find online. Although I have tried a few of those spots and some of them are pretty darn good for the purpose.
Some of those old hills have been developed. A house in the middle of a perfectly good tobogganing hill slows you down quite a bit. Some have grown up too much. Trees also do not help you set any speed records. And there seem to be more safety concerns. Zipping down the hill, out the driveway, across the road and trying to make it to the ice in the harbour would likely be frowned upon these days. It probably would have been frowned upon back then too, if our parents had found out.
But somehow, we all survived and have lived to go down hill in other ways. But in some ways, it makes me feel sad that kids just don’t get to do all the stupid things we did years ago. Although it’s probably a good thing.
