Winters in the '20s and '30s of the past century were just as snowy as this past one here. Back then, heavy wagons, with great iron-faced runners replacing their wheels, were drawn uptown by great draft horses to clear the snow.

Hardy city workers hand- shovelled the snow into the wooden-sided wagons.

The loaded wagons were then driven to nearby city parks where the snow was unloaded by more labourers. My uncle Jack Gavin was one of the labourers who loaded the snow onto those great sleds.

Interestingly, Uncle Jack, along with a few others, was paid a few cents an hour more than other labourers because they could shovel left-handed -- that is, with the left hand down near the blade of the shovel.

We North End kids would run alongside those loaded sleighs, grab the sides of the wagon, our feet on the big runners, and enjoy the ride to the park.

There were lots of "good things" to be found by scrabbling through the debris when it was unloaded at those parks: a glove or a mitten, a coin or two.

The few people who owned cars in those long-ago days would affix a set of chains to the driving wheels of their car to give them the traction they needed to get them through the snowdrifts.

Those chains clanked like the dickens when they were driven over bare or wet pavement.

Returning to left-handed stuff: After all these years, it is still eye-catching for me, an oldster, to see a bank teller or store clerk writing left-handed.

When we were kids in public school, the writing teacher wouldn't let young students write left-handed. They'd even snatch the pencil or pen from a lefty's hand and put it in the right hand when we were learning to write.

The typewriter and computer solved that issue because we type using both hands.

Ted Wilcox is a lifetime Hamiltonian with a passion for sports, community and, most of all, family.