Adjusting to Winnipeg winters took some doing

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/01/2017 (3389 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

“Cold enough for ya?”

It’s a familiar refrain and I’m still waiting for someone to answer “no,” which would necessitate a serious talk.

As the city is once again in the grip of winter, it’s all too easy for those of my generation to recall Randy Bachman’s acerbic line from his old hit Prairie Town, in which he refers to Portage and Main at 50 below.

Winnipeggers do like to exaggerate. It’s never been 50 below in Winnipeg. And in the 40-plus winters I’ve spent here there’s only been a handful in which the mercury has hit -40 C. However, I have experienced a lot of -30 C temperatures. And let’s face it, anything below -20 C is damn cold.

As I shiver driving to work in the morning it’s hard to remember that last November was one of the mildest on record. I was still riding my motorcycle, although that seems a distant memory now.

Global warming can be welcome here at certain times of the year, although the preferred term now is climate change.

Take heart though, it’s a dry cold.

That may seem an overworked cliché but, let me tell you as someone who grew up in the north of England, there’s nothing worse than a damp cold — it’ll chill you right to your bones.

It would usually snow there each winter but the snow would only stay on the ground for a few days before melting. If there was snow on the ground for more than a week you can bet some old coot would be complaining of the coldest winter since 1940-whatever.

Yet when it snowed it really snowed hard. Snowflakes could be almost two inches wide and it would snow all day but melt as it hit the ground. Very rarely would it “stick.”

When I first moved to Winnipeg it was mid-summer and 30 C, yet people warned me about winter. But when you’re sat on the sand at Grand Beach with a cold drink in your hand, who cares?

So it was a bit of a surprise when a few months later I was at work on an early November afternoon and people were panicking as it started to snow.

They say the Inuit have over 50 words for snow. Well, those tiny flakes coming down didn’t look like much snow to me. So it was a bit of a surprise when I woke up the next morning and it was two feet deep.

Working at the university, I see lots of African students. They arrive in early September when the weather is nice. Come mid-October, I see them wearing not just new parkas but every item of clothing they own.

But I’ve finally found a surefire way to beat the winter blues. A plane ticket to Mexico. I leave next week. Enjoy yourselves.

Trevor Smith is a community correspondent for River Heights. You can contact him via email at smitht@mymts.net