Winter comes every year. Canada is one of those countries with four distinct seasons. Of these, I can tolerate two, enjoy one but I despise the fourth. Winter. To paraphrase one Gilles, [Ce] pays n’est pas un pays, c’est l’hiver.
Winter is like an icicle, cutting through the joy of the other seasons. This year, the middle of February saw approximately 40 cm of accumulated snow on the ground. Forty centimetres. In some places, it was more. Forty centimetres is enough that our driveway cannot contain it while continuing to function as a driveway. I used my blue shovel to make two neat piles of the stuff, one close to our house and one close to our neighbour’s. I maintained a modest distance between the walls and the snow pile, enough for Jesus to fit in, to ensure that the warm wall did not melt the snow and then refreeze it inside the wall.
There was so much snow that entire cities ran out of space for it. Our street remains unploughed a full two weeks after the Great Snowfall of 2025. This being Canada, the solution is to clear the roads of snow and to dump it on the footpaths so those too poor to afford a car are inconvenienced. That group includes children but clearly, no one will think of the children. If you do not drive, you do not matter.
Meanwhile, many Canadians forget how to drive their cars at the slightest hint of winter weather. Some clowns drive on all-season tires while the really idiotic drive on summer tires. I acknowledge my mortality but I do not want my cause of death to be “did not spend on winter tires”. No, I maintain a set and install them every year on my rickety car. I also drive like an old person so that helps greatly. One morning, while shovelling, I noticed a car in distress, tires spinning helplessly in the snow. I tried to help the driver get his SUV unstuck from the snow until I heard him mention his other “properties”. Until that point, I was willing to ignore the fact that his SUV had summer tires. I wish that man well but will not be surprised if his sport utility vehicle’s chosen “sport” is colliding with a fixed object such as his own house or a rock.
Winter can be an interesting time. Have you observed icicles? Some are clear, some are translucent, some have ridges. I measured the ridges on mine and they are approximately one centimetre apart. According to research [1] at the University of Toronto, this is because of impurities in the frozen water. Of course, a Canadian university funded research into icicles because what else is there to do during a Canadian winter but to wonder about frozen water?
I also built a monument to icicles in our front yard. I realised that the snow pile was two meters high so I broke off a series of icicles and inserted them pointy-side down into the snow, all in a straight line. This action will not make it into the archaeological record but I tried.
Thankfully, winter is now ending and I am eternally grateful to the motion of the earth around the sun that the ambient temperature is now above freezing.
Yes, I hate winter.
[1] Ladan, J. and Morris, S.W., 2022. Pattern of inclusions inside rippled icicles. Physical Review E, 106(5), p.054211.
See also this article by the same researcher – https://thewalrus.ca/why-is-an-icicle-like-an-icicle/