Winter and Early Spring in Georgetown, Ontario: Weathering the Storm of Childhood, 1955-1964…and onward to the present day
“One thing about cold weather: it brings out the statistician in everyone.” Paul Theroux, The Old Patagonian Express
March 30, 2025 Forecast: Freezing Rain Warning: Prolonged period of freezing rain. Ice accretion of 5 to 10 mm. Power outages. Slippery surfaces and broken tree branches from ice build-up.
Thinking back to my childhood of the 1950s and 1960s in the small town of Georgetown, Ontario, I remember my parents being glued to their favourite television broadcast, delivered on a rabbit-eared set purchased from a downtown merchant named Mr. Wigo.
Their tv guru was the dapper weatherman, Percy Saltzman, who provided manic forecasts, scrawling concentric circles with a stick of chalk, which he then flipped insouciantly as the iconic punctuation point of his daily prognosis.
Percy Saltzman, Canada’s first TV weatherman, dies | CBC News
Remembering Percy Saltzman | CBC.ca
By the time my parents reached old age – about the age I have attained today – their thirst for weather minutia was slaked by 24-hour, all weather channels, which particularly pleased my father, who would flip back and forth between the ongoing forecasts and CNN, with the latter’s repeated news bulletins causing him to sputter venomously about “that dingbat Rumsfeld” in the wake of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
On a day like today, with vicious winds and freezing rain attacking like a Nordic apocalypse,
I realize how much my wife and I have become like my parents: obsessed by the latest forecasts and endlessly parsing the taxing load of trivia spewed by our Accu weather app.
Your friend,
Robert
Robert McBryde – robertmcbrydeauthor.com
