WINTER STILL SEVEN WEEKS AWAY
Civic strategist wants us all to love season again
Simon O’Byrne found a way to fall in love with winter, and now O’Byrne is leading the charge so that the rest of us might do the same.
O’Byrne, 38, an executive at Stantec, was the co-chairman of a volunteer panel asked to figure out ways for Edmonton to do better with winter, which is no easy challenge.
The wonder of a snowstorm seizes our children today, just as it seized us when we were children. The joys of snow forts, of snowball fights, of slough and community rink hockey and of skiing are quickly and happily embraced by all but the most delicate child.
But adults see a blizzard and mainly see the toil of street and sidewalk clearing. We reluctantly steel ourselves to head outside into skin-freezing wind to get to work or school.
Many of us retreat into the warmth of the house, the office or the mall, rarely spending any real time outside for months on end.
This is the way it’s become for me. I’ve taken to barely tolerating winter.
It was certainly this way for O’Byrne as well. Nonetheless, about five years ago, he had the chance to take a good job in a warmer city, but he chose to stay in Edmonton, where the life and opportunities seemed better.
O’Byrne decided then that if he was going to throw in his lot here, he should make the best of it.
“I said, ‘If I’m going to stay in Edmonton, if I’m going to be in a winter city, I have to embrace winter sports. I have to fall in love with winter. If I don’t fall in love with winter, I’m not going to want to stay in Edmonton in perpetuity.’
“I got into cross-country skiing for the first time five years ago. I got back into downhill skiing just a couple years ago, having not done it since I was a kid. I got my first set of skates since I was in elementary school. And those kinds of things have made me fall in love with it, and made me realize how precious it is because I can only do it for a couple months a year. And doing that totally changed my attitude toward winter, so that I really actually look forward to it. I actually prefer when there is snow outside.
“I have two daughters, who are seven and two, and I am seeing them get as excited about winter, and realizing that’s how I was as a kid, when I take them tobogganing below the (Royal Alberta) Museum on that hill, and just seeing their faces. I introduced my eldest to cross-country skiing last year and she went from wobbly to desperate to go on the big hills … I was realizing and reliving that magic of winter through them.”
O’Byrne’s group has just made its recommendations to council, which will help get the city moving on such things as ramping up our winter festivals and designing city streets that aren’t just empty, frozen wind tunnels for pedestrians.
One opportunity presented by winter is the long, dark night, which allows for lighted buildings to delight us, such as the Christmas trees on the Telus building, O’Byrne says.
“We have this unique opportunity because of the palette of darkness to make this incredible city and illuminate it and be whimsical and playful and have fun with lighting up all our buildings. … Imagine the High Level bridge lit up with beautiful colours that move with music.”
The best winter festival I’ve attended is Silver Skate at Hawrelak Park, where wood sculptures are erected every day and burned down before a crowd every night.
O’Byrne shares my Silver Skate enthusiasm.
“It’s incredible,” he says. “I love that when they light it up. I think we need to go really big like Guy Fawkes on steroids (Fawkes plotted to blow up the British House of Lords). Just go huge, this big edifice that we could light on fire. Imagine having it (the festival) culminating in the biggest deliberately set fire in North America.”
I believe O’Byrne is on to something here. I’m not sure how much we’ll get winter-whipped adults to ski or skate again.
But a bonfire where we burn a stack of wood as big as the House of Commons, that has definitely got potential.