In Defence of Snow

Winter is really here. Ugh!

One thing Canadians are Olympic Champions at is bitching about weather. It's a topic of discussion on every block in the country... primarily because there's a Tim Horton's coffee shop on every off ramp in the country and it's a great place to thaw out while figuring out how Mother Nature is going to screw up your day.

If I can find where I dropped my keys, we can drive out of here.

In keeping with the incomprehensible annual customs of Canadians during winter, I'll be out early on a lot of mornings huffing and puffing in an interminable battle against old man winter.

Yup… I'll be shovelling snow.

Well, I used to shovel instead of using a snow blower because the exercise helped me keep my girlish figure. For those of you unfamiliar with Canada, a “moderate” amount of snow during a passing storm is 10 to 20 centimetres (2 to 4 inches). Anything less and we simply drive over it. Anything more and we curse a lot and still drive over it. When the piles of snow get over six feet, we stay where we're at, dig out a snow bank and install central heating for temporary housing.

We call that an Ice Hotel and charge tourists eleven million dollars a night to watch their fingers freeze off and their breath adhere to their nose hairs.

Selective laziness is the reason for shovelling. It’s easier to shovel the drive than push out 2500 pounds of buried truck with nothing more than a framing hammer, a hunk of two by four and winch rope made from three rolls of braided duct tape.

At some point during my shovelling last year, I leaned on my shovel, stared at my truck and realized how demented we really are. Who in their right mind would continuously dig out a patch of their yard to park something that requires a cleared area to move in the first place? A dog sled might indeed be a better choice. The dog sled would make it difficult to keep my cheap three piece suit from getting wet and shrinking into a set of chest constricting, pinstriped, spandex leotards. Just imagine having a Seersucker boa constrictor clamped on your loins.

The doggies from the sled would keep me warm on frosty nights though.

And what about the collateral damage of lives lost? Snow blowers and snow ploughs thrust their way through mounds of snowflakes that, with no ill intent, just happened to fall on the roads and into my driveway. Is this fair to snow? If you think about it, snow has travelled great distances to settle into a new neighbourhood. They’ve barely gotten a beer open to get acquainted with the new neighbours when some gas guzzling slum lord with a blower or a quad with a plow pushes them into a snow bank ghetto packed tighter than a Northern Pike's waterproof behind.

I say we leave the snow where it is! In these economically difficult times, it requires less gas to operate a snowmobile and we haven’t a need to plough the roads. We can park the sled anywhere we like. We wouldn’t even have to shovel the walk. We could just don our snow mobile suits and mukluks and crawl out a second story window when the snow blocks the door.

After my nonsensical daydream ended I went back to murdering snowflakes. I cringed at the tiny little screams with every shovel full. The thought of their broken bodies tossed into a pile was almost overwhelming. Almost.

I have a solution. Let’s stop torturing them by throwing them into overcrowded apartment banks. They should be allowed to live where ever they choose, free and unfettered by the vagaries of the human slumlords!

Better still, let’s end the shovelling nightmare, fire up the sled and run the little buggers over.

Ingrates.

I’m already tired of snow.