Old picture fuels thoughts of a different winter

Hating April? You’re not alone. Our ancestors had reason to hate April just as much. This is what you call cold comfort.

I have photographic proof. It’s a photo The StarPhoenix ran this week from April 12, 1954.

It shows a row of cars parked on 20th Street near Second Avenue. April 12 and there is plenty of snow on the ground. In fact, it looks like it had snowed that day because the cars all have a light dusting of the detestable white stuff on them. The low temp that day was -1.7 C, the high 8.9, which isn’t great but better than we’ve got.

This was the era of big, ugly, bulgy four-door sedans, lending even less esthetic appeal to the photo. It’s a mystery how such blobs of Detroit steel made it through a Saskatchewan winter with their skinny tires and six-volt batteries and terrible heaters.

Note the frost shields on the car with the whitewall tires. Many car owners stuck these on the inside of their windows to give them a clearer view of winter to swear at.

There’s some charm in the photo, though. The lamp posts are classic Victorian cast-iron three-globe beauties. At some point in the swinging ’60s, these were likely taken to the scrapyard and replaced by something modern and practical. One cringes at the thought.

Note, too, the parking meters. Everyone knew how they worked. You put in a nickel and turned a knob. Done and done. Last week, I had to update my city parking app but before I could use it, I had to remember my user name and password which I couldn’t so I guessed but I was wrong so I had to invent another user name but it was apparently too close to my old one so they were declined so I switched to a different email and then had to re-enter my credit card number and vehicle licence plate and while I was doing this in a blind rage all I could think of was how I’d better not get a ticket in the meantime. Thank you; I feel better now.

But back to the photo which contains examples of both fame and notoriety.

First is the Folks Finer Furs store across the street in what must be the Empire Hotel. The landmark building added a 1,200-seat theatre in 1913. The Empire is now the Lighthouse, which is across the street from — guess what — a movie theatre.

The longtime fur store is named after the iconic Folk family, which not only knew its minks but its rinks. Curler Rick Folk (clad more suitably in wool than chinchilla, let’s assume) won the Brier in 1980 and no Saskatchewan team has done it since.

Down the street is the Queen’s Hotel, which would be destroyed by fire in 1980. Two firefighters died there. In 2016, a memorial plaque was installed on the side of the theatre.

The eagle-eyed will note several commercial signs painted on the side of various buildings, including one for Sweet Caporal cigarettes.

If the sweetness (?!) didn’t get the young and impressionable to smoke the rich, satisfying tobacco, note that each pack came with collectible baseball cards. Another fire of note: the New York City Sweet Caporal factory went up like a match in 1892 at the terrible cost of 40 million cigarettes.

Incidentally, April 12, 1954 made headlines in 2010 when a computer scientist in the U.K. fed 300 million facts into a computer and determined that April 12, 1954 was the “most boring day in history” because nothing much happened.

But that’s not true at all, because on a snowy April 12, 1954, a photographer took a picture in Saskatoon giving a columnist the intense joy of contemplating the exact same kind of April winter day 64 years later. I think I need a smoke.