Nanooks of the North
Moose rut on our main streets, bears hibernate in our root cellars, and seals frolic in our swimming pools. We're rough, tough, outdoorsy lumberjacks, fur trappers, and mountaineers who like to start our days with a skinny dip in the Arctic Ocean before cutting a few cords of firewood in our underwear. The only thing we like more than two feet of snow falling on our heads is a gale-force wind blowing it in our faces.
We're Canadians, damn it! Winter, give us your worst!
While we still get a few clueless Texans coming up here in July with a rack full of skis and wearing three layers of down-filled underwear looking to do a little downhill slaloming and perhaps pet a polar bear, most know Canada for what it really is: a land that isn't all that rugged, not all that frozen, and one that is full of pussies who catch colds making a lukewarm martini.
Nowhere was this more evident than in Toronto, where the temperature plummeted to depths not seen since the great winter freeze of...well 1994, actually. Yet evolution seems to have taken a mighty leap forward in that time, with the populace of Canada's largest city now exhibiting the wintering instincts of a tropical parrot. People shivered, they cursed, they sneezed, coughed and convulsed, all while wearing the latest see-through fashions from Holt Renfrew and stumbling around the downtown core looking like perplexed icicles wondering why they were so cold.
In Montreal, with the thermometer reading low enough to make the conversion between Fahrenheit and Celsius an exercise that even the most mathematically challenged could get right while cursing in both official languages, most of the population went underground and signed-up, en masse, to the PQ, marking its largest membership expansion since René Lévesque threatened to give Pierre Trudeau a wedgy on national television (or something like that...je ne parle pas le Francais).
The thinking behind this surprising, and shockingly underreported move, was that if Alberta was going to keep hurling these "clipper" things at them, they might as well separate and hope the jet stream observes sovereign, territorial boundaries.
This, of course, was cheered loud and wide in New Brunswick, where anything that keeps the jet stream away and Ontario in pain and discomfort is generally greeted by hoots of laughter and rounds of clapping, though in this case that was somewhat difficult with almost everyone from Moncton to St. John buried up to their nostrils in snow. And while it's as comparably rare and undependable as a tax form in springtime, Maritimers seem to be continually surprised that snow falls there in winter, in large quantities, and no, God isn't mad, he just has a playful sense of humour and stock in Honda snow blowers.
Meanwhile, in Alberta, where all this trouble started, people demonstrated why Westerners really aren't Canadians. These slap-happy fools, stoked to the gills on Big Rock ale, not only do cut wood in their underwear, but will sit agreeably for hours, on live national television no less and in weather that would make a Mars Lander freeze up and beg mission control for a hot toddy, and watch football, hockey, and probably an exhibition cricket test if you could arrange one. They don't complain, they don't sniffle, and don't ask for a long underwear subsidy from their local MP.
What should concern the rest of us is that these "Alberta clippers" are no naturally occurring weather phenomenon. When Albertans cried "let those eastern bastards freeze in the dark," that was no mere expression of anger over energy programs and CBC television schedules. No, that was the first battle cry in a movement that has been building for decades. Albertans know they can survive the next ice age, and that we can't. Billions of oil dollars have been invested in the development of stronger, more potent "clippers."
Global warming should be turning eastern Canada into a winter suntanning salon, and it's not. Why? Because we are under siege! So wake up and put your parkas on, and learn to like it before the "Calgary Stampede" refers to more than a bunch of leather-clad cowboys with great hair.
