Indian Summer

In Ottawa, strawberry plants bloomed and lilac bushes burst their buds. In Winnipeg, it was pussy willows. As Torontonians curiously watched their city experiment with a new machine that sucks fallen leaves from gutters like a vacuum cleaner, newspapers reported that Oct. 20 was the hottest in history. The high of 76DEG topped the 1884 record by a full five degrees.

Montreal's McGill University Observatory found that the city had an average temperature of 57DEG over the first 24 days of October, three degrees above the record. Quebec hay-fever sufferers complained that the warm days had brought back their sniffles. Violets bloomed in Westmount. It was dry too--the fourth driest October on record. There had been only .85 inches of rain all month in Montreal.

At least one Canadian was sure that the warm spell would continue for a while. Out on the Piapot Indian Reserve, northeast of Regina in Saskatchewan, Chief Abel Watetch could see things invisible to most observers. Muskrat houses this year are not tall, he said, but their walls are thick. Rosebushes have lots of buds, growing close to the ground. Jackrabbits so far have only tiny patches of white on the tips of their ears and on their forelegs. The chief's solemn prediction: six more weeks of mild weather, then a moderately mild winter with not much snow.

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