On Thursday I was sitting at my desk — and, by desk, I mean my dining room table, which has been my key piece of home office furniture for most of the last year — and paused for a moment to look out the window. Plump, fluffy snowflakes were drifting down in an almost dreamlike kind of way and I thought oh, wow, that looks pretty.

St. John's sure can dress up well for winter. Yes, it's impossible to ignore that particularly grotesque shade of brown of hard-driven slush that overwhelms the roads in seemingly no time after any snowfall, and yes, I know what drivers are like in winter, and yes, the infernal sidewalks.

But there are moments every winter when St. John's feels a little enchanted. I never get tired of gazing at the city from Signal Hill when the sun casts a certain lustre over the landscape, and everything — for as wide as the eye can see — just seems to be shivering. The Battery, always a stunner year-round, simply looks its best just after the snow has fallen.

Quite a few years ago, when I was a reporter assigned to municipal issues, I became really intrigued by a concept called winter cities, thanks to the late Arvo McMillan, who was a planner with St. John's and who walked me through all sorts of ways that St. John's — and its people — could make changes that can make the whole city feel so much more enjoyable in winter.

Winter is a season when we tend to draw indoors, and we all know ways to make our internal environments feel cosier: we put on some lights to draw away the darkness, throw a blanket on our lap if we're reading or watching TV, turn on a space heater or light up a wood stove for extra comfort.

What, though, are the things that we can do on the outside? Arvo's inspiration stuck with me through the years. When I see photos of awesome winter activities and design in other cities, I wonder, can we do that here?