Tobogganing has been in the news lately as concerns over municipal liability threatened to claim another victim.
This time it was in Oshawa, Ont., where members of a city council committee debated whether to ban the winter activity in all but two city parks.
In the end, councillors decided to put the idea on ice.
The debate sparked a short-lived uproar over the thought that government might actually be thinking about banning tobogganing.
The stories did draw attention to the fact that major cities across the country, including Edmonton, Calgary and Winnipeg, allow tobogganing only on designated city-owned hills.
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Some have suggested that if potential liability is the issue, then cities should open up all hills to the activity and simply post signs that say, “toboggan at your own risk.”
The mini-controversy brought me back to my own childhood in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when we didn’t worry as much about things like that.
I grew up on a ranch across the road from a horse pasture with a sharp rise in elevation at the south end that we called Green’s Hill.
The eastern slope of that hill was perfect for tobogganing, and we spent a lot of time every winter trying to get to the bottom as fast as possible.
The raceway was made a bit more interesting by the presence of a tree about three-quarters of the way down, smack dab in the middle of the course.
As hard as I tried, it was almost impossible to stop the toboggan from steering itself straight into that tree. I have a vague memory of once getting my scarf tangled up in the branches during once such collision and almost strangling to death, but that might have more to do with an over-active imagination than anything closely resembling reality.
Fast forward 25 years and I found myself introducing my two young daughters to the thrill of the sled.
It was now the late 1990s and the long arm of the law still hadn’t found tobogganing. However, I came up against another form of regulation — my kids.
I tried to take them on the “big hill,” but all it took was one tumble into the snow at the bottom and we were off to a gentler slope.
That’s a regulator that’s hard to ignore.
