WHAT COMES TO mind as I conjure up the winters of my childhood is the silence, a silence that was almost complete, except for the sound of the church bells, the tinkling bells of the elegant sleighs, called carioles, and the shouts of children playing in the school yard. And I remember how dazzlingly white everything was 40 years ago.

I was born in Oka, a little village beside Lac des Deux Montagnes, about 50 kilometres west of Montreal. With the arrival of the first snowstorms at the end of November or the beginning of December, the roads and highways were closed. You could only get around on foot or by sleigh. Cars stayed tucked away in their garages. To travel any distance you had to take the train. But there wasn’t a station at Oka. The train only stopped at Como, on the other side of the lake. When the lake was frozen, the mail and any visitors to our town were transported over the ice.

I think about those times occasionally. But the winter that comes to mind most often is the winter of 1939, when I was eight years old.

"Come on," you’ll perhaps be tempted to say. "What can you recall of that time?"

Ah, but when you’re eight years old, important events and people do make a deep impression. They stay in the back of your mind for the rest of your life. Then, too, there are smells, pictures, and songs that never cease to follow you.

That Christmas my father was expecting an important Russian agronomist to visit. During the past 10 years – because the climatic conditions of the two countries are similar – they had been corresponding with each other, discussing their research and various methods of cultivation. For, you see, my father taught at the local agricultural college, five kilometres from Oka.

Everything had been prepared at our house to welcome the man-from-the-foreign-snows. In the small wine cellar, carefully put down, were the bottles of Saumur, father’s favourite Anjou rosé, Bordeaux, Burgundies and La vieille cloche, a chaser potent enough to bring tears to the eyes of a seasoned sailor. In the freezer were perch and lake pike, pheasants, ducks, a fine plump turkey ready for stuffing and roasts tied up with white string. As for desserts, there were plenty of them, including doughnuts, meringues, date squares, cream whipped smoother than fine silk and almond tarts.

In the living room stood the Christmas tree, a sparkling, sweet-smelling fir that stretched as high as the ceiling. Cones from our spruce trees, wreathed with red ribbons, hung above the mirrors. In truth, as far as I was concerned, winter began at the Christmas holidays. Before that was merely the end of an old, depressing season.

On December 24, 1939, at 3 p.m., father hired a neighbour’s horses to go and meet the important Russian at the train. The horses were two fine, black-coated animals, frisky on an outward run and veritable coursers on their way back to the stables. They were harnessed to the black cariole, where we kept warm under buffalo furs.

From the platform of the little station, I spotted the locomotive and its plume of white smoke approaching in the distance. The first passenger to alight was the fair-bearded Russian, who bewitched me instantly. He was tall and powerfully built, wearing an extraordinary sable coat, of a kind that I had never seen, and a hat of the same fur, after the Cossack style. With a smile stretching from ear to ear, he opened his arms to my father, told him he had come from Moscow with only vodka to inspire him, whisked me up off the ground, gave a smart tap to the neck of the right-hand horse, climbed into the sleigh, and away we went at a gallop. How comfortable I was, snuggled between the two men in their wildcat and sable coats.

How I loved that winter: Father Christmas, the holidays, the visit, the snow. I would sometimes hear grown-ups complain that winter never ended and was so terribly harsh. For me, it was a source of wonderment.

Our house, in the heart of the village, was all lit up when we arrived from the station. When the Russian saw my mother smiling, beautiful, dressed in a very soft blue, I could sense he would have been happy to take her in his arms, in the way he had approached father. But he bowed to her in a princely fashion and, with deep, rumbling A sounds and heavily trilled Rs, he recited in French what were apparently some very well-turned compliments.

That night, as we leisurely ate the appetizing evening meal, we explained to the tall foreigner that on Christmas Eve we had a special tradition, Midnight Mass, which in reality consisted of three masses: the first, solemn and rather long, was sung in Latin and was celebrated by three priests wearing chasubles of gold cloth; the second was shorter, with a choir throwing itself into Christmas carols that were thoroughly familiar to everyone in the church; the last was dispatched at a quick, lively pace, Jesus having now been born and everybody being in a hurry to get back home. Then the presents were placed at the foot of the tree. And finally, finally, came the midnight feast, which could and did last until dawn.

Although he was Russian Orthodox, our visitor was anxious to accompany us to the Catholic church, where Denis Harbour, who had the finest voice in the village and was going to become an opera singer, opened the service with the famous Minuit, Chrétiens. His sister, Mariange, was at the organ. The choir was made up of local people, and some of them had very good voices. The Gustave-Adhémar duo, whose members we had nicknamed the rasp and the drum, seized on the "Adeste Fideles," capturing the attention of a large part of the congregation and turning many heads in the direction of the choir loft. The stentorian-voiced verger didn’t miss his chance with the Kyrie eleison. We thought the church roof was going to fly off. However, when it was the turn of the organist, the lovely Mariange (with her luxurious flowing hair and soft blue eyes), to raise her heavenly voice in "Silent Night," a hushed rapture descended upon us. It was one of the finest Midnight Masses ever. We still talk about it.

The party that followed was a great success. The Gaspé salmon, the black duck from the Lac des Deux Montagnes, the Lac Saint Pierre teal, the Lac Saint Jean meat pie and the famous Oka cheese claimed their moment of attention before being forgotten in favour of the apple tarts and the homemade sugar pies. All this was washed down with white and red wine to such good effect that with the cognac came the songs of the vast Steppes of Russia. It lasted for hours. And, of course, there were presents. In his suitcases, in addition to vodka, Black Sea caviar, an icon for mother, a balalaika for father, a lacquered jewelcase for me and some painted eggs, the big Russian had also brought a number of books by Gogol, Tolstoy and Chekhov.

There was no afternoon in the year when the streets were quieter than on Christmas Day. Everyone was asleep, except for the children, who were sent off to play in the snowbanks. I suggested that our guest should come and see the nearby lake where we skated – a favourite winter pastime. I made a point of bringing out the red wooden sleigh that my father had built so that he could take me along, bundled up in a blanket, when he went on his long Sunday treks. The big Russian understood right away when he saw the sleigh at the door. With a laugh, he harnessed himself to it, and we headed for the lake. He bought me some chocolates at the variety store on the way, walked a long distance over the ice, then made a wide detour and returned home through the forest of fir trees. He told me that he had a little girl like me, a dog like mine and a little boy. He often walked in his country, he said, beside a river called Oka, just like here. I was very proud. We are related, I told myself.

This stranger from such a faraway land made a great hit with my friends. And what a funny coat he had, they said. When he went out for a stroll, he was never alone; a whole crowd of lively little imps would go skipping along behind him. When he left, we kept something of him: a Russian song he had taught us called "Black Eyes."

On the morning of New Year’s Day, when the cariole took all four of us to catch the train, he to return to Russia, we to go and celebrate New Year’s at my grandparents’, the little boys and girls who had so often touched the Russian’s coat as if it were a talisman were there to see him off. He squeezed several little hands, kissed many rosy cheeks and took me on his lap.

The goodbyes were said at Montreal. They were affectionate, as always happens when people have taken a liking to one another, and everybody promised to meet again.

IN MY GRANDPARENTS’ house there were 40 of us at two tables. And how we talked! As soon as the desserts had disappeared, the men sat around one side, the women on the other; there was a ceaseless interchange of stories, political opinions, bits of news and so on. The evening ended with dancing and singing for the grown-ups, while we children had our own party by the light of the oil lamp and pretended to be asleep when a footstep was heard on the stairs. Eventually everybody fell asleep, late and happy. True, that night I had heard sinister words: war, René in the army overseas, fighting going on. But when one is eight years old....

One celebration followed on the other. Now it was Twelfth Night at the house of my parents’ friends. The highlight of the day was the choosing of a king and queen by means of a cake in which were hidden a bean and a pea. The girl who finds the bean becomes the queen, the boy who bites on the pea is named king. And each time either one takes a drink, the others have to raise theirs and call out, "Long live the king, long live the queen." I was queen and Jeannot was king. That evening no milk or orange juice remained in the house.

School started again, the convent for the girls, the parochial school for the boys. My father called them rural universities. The sisters taught the girls, the brothers instructed the boys. At church, where we often went, the boys sat on one side, the girls on the other. Separately, yet at the same school level, we learned the same things and had to take the same examinations. I don’t quite know why, but that year a lot of attention was given to the history of Canada – wars between the Iroquois and the French, the French and the English, the Hurons and the Algonquins. Influenced by these doughty deeds, we resolved that on a particular Saturday we too would take up arms. Two forts would be built in the snow, and then the battle would commence. The girls on one side, the boys on the other. The choice of weapons was difficult. It was decided that we would use slingshots, which was pretty serious. Starting early on the appointed Saturday, we spent the morning building our forts at the edge of the woods. The battle was to begin at 1 p.m. Pebbles being hard to find, we settled for marbles. The excitement mounted. At one o’clock ... war! We started to fire. Five minutes later it was all over. Our parents were there. "Little idiots, you could have blinded each other with your marbles," they said. "You could have hurt yourselves badly. Off home with you!" Crestfallen, we retreated.

Then there were those joyous Saturdays and Sundays when we went skating, tobogganing down the slopes or skiing across the fields. About 10 years earlier, a small group of sportsmen had begun to ski at Oka. Women began to join them. They were the first women in the area to wear trousers and high-laced boots and were admonished for doing so by the old parish priest, who thundered from the pulpit, "With your men’s breeches, you are befouling the spotless snow."

Winters in my little village were neither more nor less cold than they are today. But it was an age for me when care was unknown and time passed quickly. Most of the time was spent outside, playing.

Before twilight I would come home frozen, covered with snow and exhausted. I would go and cuddle up on my father’s lap to listen to stories and more stories or on my mother’s for one song and then another and another. But can one think of a more glorious winter than the one when a tall Russian wearing a sable coat made his appearance on the scene?

Illustration by Robert Daigneault