A week ago I walked into a car dealership, all bundled up to keep warm as I crossed the parking lot. I had on my snow boots, gloves, winter coat and woolen hat. It was not 40 below outside, but crisp enough. As I approached the counter, I looked twice to see that the man in line ahead of me was dressed in a light spring jacket, running shoes and – wait for it – a pair of shorts. This was not a rebellious teen; he was in his 40s.
What is this thing with people (mostly men) walking around in winter time with no coats, boots or hats, and clad in muscle shirts and shorts? Is it machoism, he-manism, or insaneism? Yes, it’s been a mild winter so far, but shorts?
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I don’t know much about climate change and global warming but only a fool could try to argue that our winters, at least, haven’t changed over the past few decades. In this part of the world, they’ve become much, much shorter, from almost six months to, in some years now, barely more than three.
Here are a few of my memories and observations of hard winters gone by. People under 40 will think I’m lying; those over 70 will think the winters I experienced were mild compared to the ones they endured.
I wasn’t around for this one, but the Taj Mahal of winters in Perth County occurred in 1947 when so much snow fell it took a bulldozer one week to clear the five miles of Highway 23 from Mitchell to Bornholm.
Some winters, before we left our one-room country schoolhouse for home, we were cautioned by our teacher not to touch the hydro wires if we walked home on top of the snow banks along the roadsides, they were that high. (No snowblowers in those days to keep the banks levelled.)
I remember one winter playing hockey on our pond on April 30. Now, people have opened up their cottages by then.
One winter, in the early ‘7Os, our family was snowed in on our farm for six days, as the roads were impassable. A neighbour brought us groceries on his snowmobile. (Thanks Bob!)
Also around that time, my university roommates and I, following a terrific storm, walked down the middle of the deserted four-lane Adelaide Street in London, waist-deep in snow, to get to the Oxford Hotel for some much-needed (we thought) beer. (To be fair to climate change, we would have made the trek if the snow had been up to our necks.)
One night in the early ’80s I was trying to sneak home along Quinlan Road just outside of Stratford when my car bogged completely down in a drift. Some guys came out of a little pink house and got it into their laneway, but I had to stay the night. How many nights was I “storm-stayed” in others’ homes? Does that happen at all anymore?
One woman I knew, during a terrible storm around this same time, ran her car off the road and could go no farther. She walked in a farmer’s lane along Highway 8 between Mitchell and Stratford and finding no one home, like Goldilocks, settled in. The farm family couldn’t make it home and she couldn’t make it out. So she stayed two days, watched TV, read their books and ransacked their fridge.
I have (foolishly) driven in whiteouts so bad I was sure I would never see home again but I got some good prayer practice in at those times and survived somehow.
Years ago, everyone seemed to have engine block plugs sticking out of their radiators to keep their motors warm overnight so they’d start in the cold mornings. Does anyone do that now in southern Canada? Does anyone think their car won’t start tomorrow morning?
The other night I saw a TV news item about how the glaciers are melting in Iceland. A few days later, I read an article which stated the glaciers have melted and frozen again many times over the past four billion years.
I don’t know who’s right, but the day I wear my shorts outside in January will be the day the environmentalists will have won over another convert.
(Update 2019: I was a bit embarrassed by this column and had to do some major surgery on it here. I was a pretty strong climate change skeptic 12 years ago. In other words, ignorant.)
©2007 Jim Hagarty
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