Making most of winter leads to viral video

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/03/2015 (4194 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Last month I wrote about the incredible amount of snow P.E.I. had received. If you can believe it, even more has fallen and it’s led to one of the most popular stories I’ve ever done for CBC.

The snow began to fall the day before Islander Day (the same day as Louis Riel Day in Manitoba). Most people were looking forward to a long weekend but this was no day of rest for our small weekend news crew. We finished our work on Sunday and had to stay at a hotel because we couldn’t make it home.

To get into work on Islander Day I had to crawl on my hands and knees from the road across the parking lot to the building. When I tried to walk across the more-than 70 centimetres of snow that fell I sank up to my waist.

The next day I was assigned to find out how the snow was affecting islanders outside Charlottetown.

I travelled to Summerside, the second largest city on P.E.I., because I had heard about a motel that had been without power for 24 hours because of the storm.

Then I got a tip about Marcel Landry, a man who had dug a snow tunnel to his car; so I interviewed him inside the tunnel.

 That story has since become the most-watched interview I’ve ever done. A couple of minutes after it was posted online, it completely blew up. As I write it has been viewed more than 2.3 million times on Facebook alone.

People absolutely loved Landry’s spirit in all that snow. He was cheerful and playful in a situation that would have frustrated many.

I did an update a week later which was shown across the country. Then the story starting getting picked up by international media. CNN, Yahoo, and Msn.ca have all picked up and posted the follow-up story, which has now been viewed more than 2.7 million times on Facebook.

A while back, I got an email from someone who had read my column and moved to P.E.I., just like me. He challenged me to find ways to enjoy the P.E.I. winter aside from the obvious.
Well, I think Landry definitely found a way to enjoy winter and I’ve had fun covering it, too.

Krystalle Ramlahkhan is a community correspondent for St. Vital who is currently living and working in Prince Edward Island. She can be reached at krystalle.ramlakhan@gmail.com