Walking home from a workshop, I passed a father carrying three pairs of skates. Trailing about ten feet back was a young kid swaddled in a snowsuit and hockey jersey, carrying a tiny plastic stick. His face was hidden behind his bug-headed, full-face-mask helmet. Another ten feet behind him trundled an even smaller child, with a similar but even more diminuitive outfit, complete with bug head.
After the littlest one passed by, I paused and turned to watch them walk up Somerset toward the frozen canal, into the taunting blaze of the winter’s setting sun. For a moment I glimpsed the glinted silhouette of these three silent people, snow-squeaking toward a cold, steaming evening scratched out happily on the ice.
It was a perfect picture. It was the kind of image that I could take out when Americans ask what it means to be Canadian. It was the kind of image I could take out when anyone asks me what life is about.
But I left my camera in my bag. Not everything in life needs capturing.
[Ed’s Note: Besides, it was way too cold for him to take his hands out.]
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