Snowplowing demanded real horsepower
Before the memory of February’s towering snowbanks melts away in the spring sunshine, I want to show readers examples of how rural folk coped with snow 70 years ago.
If the bureaucrats who persuaded aspiring farmers to come to Parry Sound in the 19th century knew that the district lay squarely in a snowbelt, they certainly didn’t advertise it.
As we of the following generations have learned only too well, moist winter winds off Georgian Bay annually dump this region with a double dose of winter’s snowpack. On top of all the ordinary homesteading hardships, our ancestors too often found themselves snowed in.
Before various levels of government stepped in to keep public roads clear in winter, the job was left pretty much to individual effort. The roads were usually flanked with rail fences, which trapped snow blowing across adjacent fields, turning the road allowance into a trough brimming with snow.
Snow. Following a blizzard, it was a case of who would blink first. Sooner or later, some settler with urgent business to attend to hitched onto a light sleigh and urged his team through the drifts, thus breaking the way for others. With each passing of sleigh or cutter, the road gradually improved–until the next storm struck.
Parry Sound lumbermen were also inconvenienced by Georgian Bay’s annual gift of snow–although the resulting abundant snowmelt was turned to advantage when the spring log drive started. Logging contractor Walter Scott, of McKellar, once told me that in some winters he spent more money handling snow than he did handling sawlogs. Throughout the annual January to March log haul, sleigh roads were kept clear using a V-shaped plow made from wide planks and weighted down, if necessary, by a log or two riding on top.
Two or more teams of horses provided the motive power. Later in the game, a gadget-equipped, factory-made piece of machinery called a “patent plow” pushed the wooden plow aside, but that’s another story that can be found in my latest book, Lots More Parry Sound Stories.
The lumberman’s wooden snowplow was also adapted for use out in the settlements.
My dad, like many other farmers, used one in his annual logging operations, keeping open a sleigh road through the fields and into the bush. And whenever a clogged public road was in urgent need of being opened to traffic, neighbours would hitch their teams onto someone’s plow, load it down well, and, with many stops to rest the horses, carve a path through the drifts.
The accompanying photographs document two such occasions.
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