The Weekly Wednesday Storm

We had some slippery sleet last night, and at that we were much better off than our New Brunswick neighbours across the Bay of Fundy. Tens of thousands of customers there are without electric power today.

We discovered the sleety conditions as we were getting ready to go to a class we attend on Wednesday evenings, so we cancelled out of the class. This is the same class that had to be postponed or cancelled something like eight times last winter--it seemed like a storm blew in and made driving treacherous every Wednesday, and on few other days, last year.

Being Canadian means you take the weather seriously. You aren't appalled by a few snowflakes, but you don't bull through things regardless of the conditions.

When we were in the Arctic, in one of the villages where we lived there was a sort of elephants' graveyard of broken trucks and cars. There weren't all that many four-wheeled vehicles in that part of the north in those days anyhow, and certainly the means to repair a truck were very, very limited. But a lot of the vehicles looked like they had suffered something catastrophic, as opposed to being laid up for the lack of a spare double-sided positronic choke release valve. I remember people telling me that most of the wrecks were the result of people from "the south" (by which the locals meant Toronto or Montreal) driving around as if they were in the south, rather than north of the tree line.

When you're in the south, the clock rules you far more than when you're in the north. In the south, if there's a meeting you're supposed to be at, you head out for it even if the roads are a bit skiddy. The alternative is to take a sick day or look like not-a-team-player. In the north, the weather trumps the clock. You may have an appointment, but if you look out the window and see nothing but flying gray pellets and cannot make out even the shape of the building next to yours, unless lives are at stake it is generally expected that you make a pot of tea and find something that needs doing at home.

In this shiny digital age, we can do a lot online that we used to have to do in person, so we can often cock a snook at the weather. We no longer absolutely have to brave the elements and drive an hour or two to the meeting (and an hour or two back, natch) in order to watch and respond to somebody's 20-minute Powerpoint.

This is not a solution in every case, alas. In our part of Nova Scotia, the areas of really good wifi are interlarded with areas where you are lucky to have dialup access. Oh, and our Wednesday classes are in tap dancing.