Summer days drifting away

Cycling into work today I felt a distinct chill in the air. This coupled with the increased talk of the rather alarming words "winter" and "snow" around the department makes me think the end of summer is nigh. One work colleague told me today that he turned the heating off in his pool at the weekend which pretty much confirms it. Winter is a big thing here. Compared to anywhere else Canadian winters are hard and long. But life here doesn't stop at a few feet of snow so I'm looking forward to teaching my kids to ski and I could do with brushing up my skating too. Ice Hockey (or just "Hockey") is enormous here. My sons five year old friend across the road plays Hockey for a little league team and flies around on the ice as if he was born on it. Everyone has HDTV here because you can actually see the puck during the game. I can actually picture myself in the beginners skating class now surrounded by 3 year olds. On the positive side, skating is very accessible here. When the cold arrives, they'll flood and freeze all the local basketball and tennis courts so we'll be only five minutes walk from the local rink. Just close enough to pop home regularly and warm up again. At minus 20 degrees (pretty much the norm for winter) I think we'll be needing those breaks fairly frequently.