Long before Wiarton Willie and Shubenacadie Sam were predicting winter's end, Canadians relied on bears to indicate when spring would arrive.
Western University history professor Alan MacEachern made the realization while digging through Canadian newspapers from the late 1800s. The old papers made it clear Canadians' original animal of choice for predicting weather patterns was the bear.
“If you think about it, it’s not hard to believe. A bear’s credentials are impeccable,” said MacEachern. “They hibernate, they are found across the country, and they are pretty easy to observe, if only at a distance.”
Using behaviour patterns of hibernating animals to predict the weather came to North America from Europe in the 1800s.
According to MacEachern's research, when Canadian newspapers began reporting the February 2 folklore in the late 1800s, they initially favoured reporting on a bear. But south of the border, the Americans were favouring the groundhog and dubbed February 2 "Groundhog Day."
A February 3, 1900 edition of British Columbia’s Cascade Record newspaper, found by MacEachern, indicates when the change in weather prognosticating animals began. On that date, the newspaper reported "Yesterday was Bear or Groundhog Day."
“The Canadian bear slowly succumbed to the American groundhog by the early 1900s,” said MacEachern.
He added that in addition to being a quirky fact, the history of how Groundhog Day came to be has important significance.
“People of the past had countless ways to interpret the natural world. The one great advantage the Groundhog Day tradition has had is that it is associated with a single day, allowing it to become entrenched in a way other folk wisdom hasn’t,” said MacEachern. “In a way, Groundhog Day commemorates, and stands in for, all the nature lore we’ve forgotten.”
