Onset of Winter: Canada Edition

“It’s the most wonderful time of the year. It’s the hap…happiest season of all.”

You would expect that to be the soundtrack in my head this time of year, especially since I gushingly declared my love for winter a few years ago. “I love winter” , I said, “the colder it is - the more I like it”, I said, “winter is my favourite season”, I said. 

Well, I’m now facing the prospect of my fourth winter in a country that has one of the harshest winters in the inhabited world. Maybe I should reevaluate. 

Now, it is true that Montreal is by no means the coldest city in Canada and of my three winters here, I have spent one in balmy British Columbia. To give you an inkling of how balmy, consider this: so proud are the people in BC of their mild winters that even the universities there label their January to May term - the "Spring" term - while the rest of the country doesn’t even begin to see the snow abating until early May. They go from the "fall" term to the "spring" term and completely bypass winter - both literally and figuratively. So, by all accounts I have had it easy so far. 

But I’ve still seen middle of the day lows of -35C (with wind chill), I know now that a clear sunny day in winter is bitingly cold while an overcast day is actually bearable, I know now why freezing rain is so dangerous, I have experienced the breathlessness that comes with doing something so simple as walking 750 meters against the wind on an exposed street with freezing wind blowing in your face and I know what it feels like to have your toes and fingers frozen so completely that they hurt and continue to tingle for long after they’ve been warmed. Infact, it sometimes hurts more while warming up than when it was cold. 

After living through Montreal winters, I know enough to know that the balmy -1 to -3C that it usually was in my part of BC was actually ‘Canadian spring’. So the question remains - do I still love winter?

Yes, I do. I still do. Really. And let me show you why:

1. A strange calm seems to envelop the city and makes everything more beautiful

View of Montreal from across the frozen St. Lawrence river

The steps leading down from Mont-Royal - Montreal's central park.

2. Even the view outside your window defies you to be blasé about it

3. And the countryside is just magical.

A horse drawn carriage used by traditional cabana sucrès - sugar shacks - to collect maple sap

This is actually inside a protected park where animals choose to live but may come and go as they please. Deer do not roam the streets of Montreal. Yet.

 How can I not love this season that turns everything into this pretty, frozen wonderland.

Now excuse me while I go crank up the heat.