In this darkest part of the year – with equally dark thoughts threatening to divide our neighbourhoods, our nation, even the entire world – there’s one thing that we here in Canada can do to make things a little bit brighter: Stop making fun of Vancouverites reacting to snow.
I know, I know – making fun of the Lower Mainland for sliding into chaos at the mere mention of the word “flake” is a tradition that has united most of Canada for centuries, right up there with laughing at the Toronto Maple Leafs and complaining about our awful cellphone contracts. Who can forget that great speech from Sir John A. MacDonald: “Let us be English or let us be French ... but above all let us be Canadians. Except for Vancouver – let them cram it for being so clueless when faced with a bit of ice that they could practically be the Maple Leafs’ power play.”
I grew up in Alberta and used to be one of those who would laugh at hapless Vancouver falling to bits when it snowed once every three years.
“Oh, you poor dears! Was your dog’s paddleboard yoga class cancelled?”
Like everyone else in “real” Canada, I knew what “real” winter felt like. I have a dead patch of skin shaped like Antarctica on my cheek to prove it, frozen numb during a ski run at -28 C. I spun my mom’s Toyota Tercel into a snowbank on an icy street, my youthful exuberance getting the best of me as I pushed that little car to its limit: 38 kilometres per hour.
I spent full months living from front door to car, from car to office, from office to mall, from Jack to Daniels – never spending more than a minute outside because the outside could literally kill you in minutes.
Whenever we’d hear about Vancouver being brought to a standstill by a couple of inches of snow we’d laugh, or scoff, or put on our best Crocodile Dundee accent (the rest of Canada loves the ’80s), stare down Vancouver and say “that’s not winta. … This is winta.” And then we’d show Vancouver our giant knoife.
But I’ve been living in the Lower Mainland for more than 10 years now, and I finally get it. Winter doesn’t come to Vancouver often, but when it does, it’s messier than Donald Trump’s Twitter feed. “These streets used to be so great, now they’re unwalkable. Sad. At least they’re white!”
Vancouver winter storms usually happen near the freezing point, so snow falls, then melts, then turns to slush, then freezes again, then melts, then freezes again. And lots of folks don’t own a shovel and/or brain, and so a lot of the sidewalks don’t get cleared. We’re left to walk on that weird crusty slush ice that eventually freezes again into jagged, slippery craters that approximately resemble a bucketful of frozen Lego.
On Monday we had a snowstorm here that lasted all day. At least, I thought we had a snowstorm. I walked to work in it, my boots bearing the salty slush stains to prove it. The rest of the country, however, didn’t want to hear about it. We wrote a story under the headline Snowstorm Brings up to 15 cm of Snow to North Shore and posted it on our Facebook page with the caption “Winter has arrived.” It seemed reasonable, but whooo-boy the comments came in quick and ruthless.
“Winter, 15 cm of snow? LOL!” was the first one.
“Snowstorm?” came another reply a few minutes later, accompanied by four laugh emojis. “Lol last time I was in a snowstorm, it lasted around 4 or 5 days!”
I started to have an existential crisis. Did we, in fact, have a snowstorm? It was cold outside, huge flakes were falling all day and the ground, trees, houses and marijuana shops were all covered in white stuff. Was that not a snowstorm? Was that even snow?
The story was even accompanied by a photo of a bus on a snowy, slushy street. Actually, the bus wasn’t technically 100 per cent on the street – the front part of it was smashed into a very large tree. Yes, this was definitely a “storm” that involved “snow.”
With that I realized that the country had gone a little too far, treating the story of snow in Vancouver like a fake news story about Hillary Clinton stealing a spaceship from NASA so she could fly to Mars and torture baby Republican Martians. No one would believe such a thing except half of all Americans.
But the snow is real, people. The cold is real. It definitely won’t stick around for as long as it does in the rest of the country, but please don’t deny its very existence. Four days after the first snowfall, we got another huge dump. God knows how long it’ll stick around.
Pray for us, rest of Canada. Who should have to live in a hell like this, where each day you wake up not knowing where your dog will do yoga?
Andy Prest is the sports editor for the North Shore News and writes a biweekly humour/lifestyle column. [email protected]
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