In Defence of Fall

The cover of Fall Baking by Brooke Bell

While my colleague Maya1 is a very vocal Summer person, I’m of the mind that our nearly non-existent transitional seasons, Spring and Fall, are the best time of year here in the GTA. Summer is just too hot, and unlike in Winter, where we can bundle up against the cold, there’s only so much a person can do to beat the heat without electrical assistance. Winter has its charms, including the potential to be the most beautiful season, but with rising temperatures and less snowfall, it’s mostly just a slushy mess with dormant and dead plants everywhere. Spring and summer hit the sweet spot between the extremes, with Spring bringing the promise of more sunlight and warming temperatures. In contrast, Fall brings relief to people like me, who find the summer heat unbearable and heralds an explosion of colour in the forests, even if it is only for a short time.2 I’m not going to turn this into an argument on the internet; disagree if you wish, but I will go through a few reasons why I think Fall is the best.

The return of my favourite sport: curling.

The cover of Curling for Dummies by Bob Weeks

If you put on hockey and curling simultaneously, I will watch curling. I’ll go out of my way to watch curling, and for years during high school and university, I was a curler. I want to get back to it, but life has always found a way to make that difficult. Still, each Fall, I look at my upcoming schedule and imagine fitting curling back in there, then I sigh and think, “Not this year,” and content myself with watching the various significant curling events. For those of you not familiar with the game, it’s something that sounds rather silly, and also kind of is rather silly, but it’s also profoundly strategic and way harder than it sounds. I’ll put a shortened explanation here; find the original one in footnote 3. Teams take turns sliding unreasonably heavy rocks down a sheet of ice toward a target while two teammates walk beside the rocks, armed with brooms to sweep the ice in front of them if the team’s leader yells at them. Yes, I’m amping up the silliness, but it comes from a place of love for the game4. If you want the full rules, check out Curling for Dummies. The game is also known as ‘chess on ice,’ and it’s a well-deserved name. Strategy plays a huge part in making it enjoyable to play and watch, and there’s a lot of it to learn. Many players play the first three positions, lead, second, and vice, for years before finally moving up to skip and making the calls for their team. Take some time this Fall to watch one of the events, the Grand Slam of Curling is live as this post goes up, and learn from players and commentators how the roaring game is played. Or watch a silly romantic comedy about the sport: Men with Brooms.

Harvest festivals and apple-picking

The cover of Eye-popping Jack-o'-lanterns by Mary Meinking

Maybe it’s corny, but some of my favourite childhood memories are of going apple/pumpkin-picking with my parents and attending the Markham Fair. There was one year when we found white pumpkins, something my younger self had never seen before so that year we ended up with a ghostly jack-o-lantern for Halloween. My family never went overboard with carving, not like the designs in Eye-popping Jack-o’-lanterns, but that year, my father carved a curvy, more organic-looking face than his usual blocky, square teethed affairs to fit the ghostly theme. Regarding apples, I may have more of an affinity for what we’d get after returning home than the apple picking itself, though the place we went had horse-drawn carriages to get us to the orchard, so that was always fun. But what did we get when we got home? My mom would make apple pie. These days, I’m perfectly capable of making my own pie or other apple-based concoctions, but I’m still not going to say no to a pie baked by my mother; I’d be bonkers to do that. If you, too, enjoy apple picking or have a child who does, check out How D’ya Like Them Apples for ideas on how to put your harvest to use. Or consider the simply-titled Apples, which delves into the differences between varieties and what kind is best used for what purpose. Or both; we’re not going to stop you.

Oh, you know what else Fall is good for? Staying inside where it’s cozy and playing some board games! Why isn’t this its own section, you ask? Because then I’d just make a board game post, and that’s not what this is. But I can point out one thematically appropriate game for this section: Lanterns, The Harvest Festival. However, I admit the theme is more in the title than in what you’re actually doing since you’re not harvesting anything; you’re placing tiles with coloured lanterns to earn cards and set off fireworks. It’s a lightweight game with easy-to-understand mechanics and a good amount of strategy behind it. Everdell, which I covered in a previous post, fits the harvest theme better, so check that out, too.

Holiday Shopping

The cover of A Beginner's Guide to Kintsugi by Michihiro Hori

What? Don’t give me that look. I know I’m weird, but this can’t just be a me thing. I enjoy figuring out the perfect gifts for the people in my life. Just ask my wife, who’s been enjoying her new coffee grinder since her birthday not long ago. Now let me be clear: going to stores and dealing with Christmas before Halloween is over? That’s not what I want. I believe I’ve said before that Christmas should be kept to December, but this is when I start thinking about gifts and determining what to get people. Often, this results in the niblings getting board games of some variety. Still, I’m generally vindicated in this decision by my siblings saying how often the game gets played, and being called as a rules reference when they’re learning. I’ve enjoyed one in-person shopping ritual since pre-pandemic times: heading to the One of a Kind Show. If you’re unfamiliar with this one, it’s a giant artisan show held on the CNE grounds twice yearly, one in the Spring and a larger one at the end of November. I’ll usually come out with at least a couple of gifts scratched off my list, and seeing what makers from across the country are making sometimes inspires new ideas for my work here at VPL. One thing I’ve been considering is jewellery making since seeing the various designers at the show always makes me sad that I didn’t take any Material Art and Design courses during my time at OCADU.5 Or perhaps, given a large enough budget, I could introduce a Kintsugi and, in the spirit of repair cafes, help customers make something broken whole again and even better for it. I may be a Digital Creation Specialist, but we encourage makers of all kinds at VPL.

Go for a walk.

Enjoy the fall foliage while it lasts. We’ve got a ton of books on hiking trails in Ontario for you to peruse, so check one out now while the leaves are still green, and plan where you’re heading once the vibrant yellows, oranges, and reds come out.

That’s it from me for this post. I hope I’ve given you some reasons to look forward to the season. I’ll be back at the end of the month with something else. Will it be scary? Maybe. Though I’m not really a horror person, so I’ll probably leave that topic to my colleagues who enjoy the genre.

1 When I told her I was doing this post, she gleefully admitted to trashing the season and told me to quote her: “It’s cold, it’s rainy, and it sucks” – Maya on Fall

2 Pumpkin spice is not a reason to love Fall. You can have pumpkin spice year-round; just make the mix yourself.

3 Two teams of four, or two in the mixed format, take to a sheet of pebbled ice that’s 146-150 feet long and take turns sliding 44-pound granite rocks down the ice to land them closer to the centre of a target, the ‘house,’ painted under the ice than their opponents. After throwing eight rocks each, whichever team has their rock closest to the ‘button,’ or center of the target, gets one point for each rock closer than their opponent’s closest rock. Rocks that don’t touch the house don’t count in this calculation. But if you get even one point, you throw first in the next round or play, giving up the last rock and a huge strategic advantage along with it.

4 When you boil down pretty much any other sport, it gets just as silly. Here’s the great Robin Willaims on Golf: LANGUAGE WARNING

5 Ontario College of Art and Design University.

About Adam

Adam is a Digital Creation Specialist - Children who never has enough shelf space for his board game collection, wall space for his photographs, or stomach space for his baking. Once he’s got a book in his clutches (preferably a fantasy, or humorous non-fiction one) absolutely nothing else is getting done that day. Working in a library is a blessing and a curse to his free time.  |  Meet the team