The anatomy of a snow day

I called a very bad Snow Day early in my career. It might have been in the 2006-07 school year, my first as the Head of Montcrest School. The decision on whether to open the school or not was one I needed to make alone, edified only by The Weather Network on cable television and whatever forecast AM radio told me. At 6:00 a.m., after several back-and-forths in my mind, I made the call for a Snow Day and began executing the cumbersome “phone tree.” I called certain members of the admin team, and then each of them in turn called assigned staff members. A designated parent in each class was called and notified the parents on their list.

It was the multi-level marketing of spreading the good news.

The radio stations and CP24 needed to be informed. Once again, it was a call on a landline from my kitchen. The act of prioritizing the radio stations on my call list was an exercise in guessing the listening habits of my parent community. Andy Barrie’s Metro Morning seemed a safe bet but the news was shared in a pedantically slow approach. How could I trust Mad Dog and Billie with something so important? My own favourite, CFNY, was totally unreliable for such matters.

My recollection of that morning is that the snow stopped at about 6:15 a.m. The roads were pretty clear long before the school day would have begun. The TDSB and TCDSB schools were open, all buses were running and the independent schools were mostly open with a few exceptions. There was certainly no need for a Snow Day. I was a hero to the kids and my colleagues; the parents showed a lot of patience with the poor decision-making of the inexperienced Head of School, and we were a bit of a punchline to the other independent schools. I have seen a lot in my 20 years of school leadership, but I’ll always hold that day as among my loneliest as a leader.

Having recognized many years ago that making a call on a Snow Day is not a task one wants to do alone, the Heads of the independent schools in Toronto have since formed a friendly cabal to make this lonely decision together. This was initially a Bell conference call, but is now a 5:30 a.m. Zoom with a strict prohibition on video. I’m always amazed that these confident leaders can sit in silence as we hum and haw and wait for someone to make the courageous first call so we can fall in line or choose to stand alone. While it doesn’t appear on my CV, I was the Snow Day Czar for the better part of a decade, but my friend Struan Robertson, Head at the York School, has taken this over.

Interestingly the TDSB has recently become a central character in the theatre of these conclaves. While the TDSB and TDCSB could be counted on to cancel school buses, I can’t recall a full Board-wide school closure before the Great Valentine’s Day Eve closure of last February. Once the TDSB makes the call, the rest of us have no option but to fall in line since so many of our faculty would need to take a personal day to take care of their children.

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When I was a boy we had a Snow Day only once that I can recall. It was in 1977 or 1978. I clearly remember my Dad’s response as I asked why we weren’t rushing around to get out the door that morning, “I don’t think there’s going to be school today.” I had no idea that this was actually a thing. I pulled on my snowsuit and raced outside. The snow was deeper than I’d ever known. Kenridge Avenue was unplowed and the line between lawn and driveway and street was unbroken. Later we’d tackle the menace of the snow; for now, the snow won. A welcome retreat from the world for us; just the four of us in my family. Just us. I think the word that I associate most with that feeling that morning was “safe.” One cold snowy morning, the world was cancelled and I was safe and warm in my home.

Sometimes we don’t set aside the perfect memories when they’re happening. Sometimes we do. I remember a lot of that day almost fifty years ago with a clarity that I can’t bring to things that happened a week ago.

There is so much in our world that, when placed side-by-side with an earlier version of the same scenario, is so unrecognizable. This is certainly true for the machinations of a Snow Day with the phone tree and the sense of anticipation as the long (or short!) list of school closures is read out. What hasn’t changed is the impact. I can think of very few situations in our lives that match the universal sense of excitement, peace, and joy as a Snow Day. The recipe for this joy is so hard to match in a circumstance other than a Snow Day. It needs to be hoped for but unexpected. It needs to be an outcome that impacts everyone, adult and child, across our city at the same instance. Everything is cancelled, the world outside of this home is paused. It’s timeless.

Of course, few things in our lives match all of these criteria. And we have no idea when we’ll be blessed and surprised again by the next one, checking off all the same boxes of perfection. Snow Days are a unicorn that we catch a glimpse of so rarely that we begin to wonder if they exist at all. And then they bless us once again.

Here’s to the Snow Day!