When did a Canadian winter become an indoor activity? |
Canadian winters shape our culture, our humour and our childhoods. Increasingly, however — and especially since the pandemic — they shape something else: how constrained young people feel. What used to be a season of exploration has quietly become one of confinement. Most kids now spend winter indoors, cycling between school, screens and sleeping. Heading back into winter, this pattern is not benign, but a warning.
The Canadian Health Measures survey revealed that only 21 per cent of Canadian kids aged 12 to 17 are meeting the national physical activity recommendations, a substantial decrease since before the pandemic. And winter is when that 21 per cent decreases even further: outdoor recess shrinks; sports get cancelled by frost, cold snaps or poor air quality and families keep kids inside because it’s easier, cheaper and seems safer.
But winter, precisely because it can be harsh and inconvenient, may be the most important outdoor classroom we have today.
I see this in my role as Scouts Canada’s National Commissioner, where we provide young people with the opportunity to learn safely outside year-round. When a group of Cub Scouts build a snow shelter or light a camp stove despite the wind biting at their gloves, the lesson isn’t just “how to camp in Winter.” The lesson is that they can solve problems that might seem too big at first for them........