For adults, the snow plow is a machine designed to obfuscate one’s driveway by leaving a pile of snow at the edge of the road several feet high.

For kids, it’s just the beginning.

When I was in grade school (living in Toronto), one of the highlights of winter was when the snowplows would clear the parking lot at my public school.  It would mound the snow at the edge of the parking lot, in shapes that were perfect for building snow forts.

Snow forts can be an architectural wonder, and they really show how ingenious kids can be.  We would start by burrowing holes in the snow until our mittens were soaking wet from sweat.  The “holy grail” was to dig out a hole large enough to sit in comfortably without the roof caving in.  From there, we would work on building “tunnels” from one cave to another.

With luck, the mound of snow would turn into a rather complicated maze of tunnels and caves.

The architectural challenges would quickly turn into societal challenges.  Snow forts were largely democratic places, with clearly established territory and rules of conduct.  For instance: one would not enter into another person’s cave without first asking permission.  And one would certainly not traipse on top of the fort - risking the collapse of someone’s cave.

One of my favorite memories was the “no man’s land” between our public school and the neighbouring Catholic school.  Nobody liked the Catholics (big surprise, huh?) and the occasional snow fights that would erupt were monumentous.

If word had gotten around about an impending snow fight, a few of us might brave our recesses to build “stockpiles”.  We would burrow little caves into the snow mounds that separated our playgrounds and stockpile snowballs.  The most coveted spots were the ones closest to where the kids would come out of the school; the sooner one could strike, the better.

And such was the life of a school child in the Canadian winters.