SIGNS OF SPRING
In 2014, what was then Environment Canada transferred to Western University on long-term loan its collection of historical daily weather observations recorded by volunteer observers between 1870 and 1960. Since then, students and I have pored over almost half the collection — maybe a million observations from all across Canada. When we happened upon a February 2 observation, we looked for a reference to an animal and its shadow. But we have seen only one. “No shadow, Bear did not see it,” wrote Thomas Andrew of Arden, Ontario, on February 2, 1907.
This dearth of news related to groundhogs, or even bears, came as a surprise. But it is also a reminder that people of the past had countless other ways of interpreting the weather, the seasons, and the natural world based on first-hand experience. In the course of Andrew’s observations, for example, he also remarked on the first spring appearance of a wide variety of birds and other animals, and he noted when plants blossomed, trees leafed, frogs piped, and lake ice formed and broke up. February 2 was just one of 365 days each year for tracking nature’s changes.
The one great advantage the Groundhog Day tradition possesses is that it is associated with a single day, a focal point that has helped it to become culturally entrenched in a way other folk wisdom about nature has not. The irony is that, while those who make weather observations for Environment and Climate Change Canada today are far likelier to mention the groundhog on February 2, they are also far less likely to offer other natural- history information the rest of the year. In a sense, Groundhog Day commemorates, and stands in for, all the nature lore that most of us have forgotten.
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