Day 488: I Am Not Prepared

I am in Canada and it is snowing, as it does for eight months of the year. There is snow everywhere in piles centimetres thick, but it is confusing some people. For example, by 9.05am it becomes apparent that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation are (unlike everyone else in Canada), rubbish at predicting the weather (and/or have been drinking Ice Wine for breakfast).

They are trying to say how much snow will fall and cannot make up their minds. For e.g. at 7.45am there will be "between five and ten centimetres"; at 8.05, "between ten and fifteen centimetres", and by 9am, "under five centimetres". It is all rubbish though because I have my eyes and I know what I can see in the garden. At 7.30am it looks like this:



Twenty minutes later – by the time I have consumed a cup of coffee and six oysters and spent ten minutes doing some 3-way online chatting with Alain de Botton and John Humphys – it looks like this:




This is not good news. In fact, it is my worst nightmare happening in real-time. I am going to die in a blizzard, and all because I was not prepared.

For some weeks now I have been looking at the most terrifying web-feature on the internet. It is called the Canadian Disaster Database. ”You can search the disaster database by using criteria such as the type of disaster, and/or the location or time period of occurrence…”, it trills, encouraging me to “…please select one or more disaster type, one or more province and one or more time period from the lists below..."

It is fucking terrifying. According to the statistics I am definitely going to die (early) of natural causes, e.g. a hurricane (with ice in it) coming down the garden and tearing the house up (despite the fact that it is tethered to the ground with tungsten cables) whilst I am inside it watching Dickinson’s Real Deal on BBC Canada.

What makes it so awful is that I am not prepared for natural disasters of any kind, even though I know I should be. I know this fact for one simple reason: the second most terrifying web-site on the internet, Get Prepared. It shits me up good and proper, and you can see why:

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I do not have a single emergency kit, not even a tiny sunken candle in a tin in the car in case I fall into a snow drift on the way to the state-owned wine shop. It is a disaster.

But is it? As time passes, it is clear that Canadians have been genetically modified over time and that their blood is 43% anti-freeze. In England when there is snow like there is in Quebec today (about 10 centimetres), the whole country grinds to a stop and the tabloids have gigantic headlines saying things like SECOND ICE AGE ATTACKS BRITAIN with a photograph of a yeti, and then a double page spread with AEROPLANES LOCKED TO GROUND BY 1 INCH OF SNOW.

In Canada it is different. Look at this evidence with your eyes. It is the view that I had from a window at Montreal airport this afternoon.



You can probably see a parked Air Canada aeroplane (to add some authentic local flavour), and the two snow ploughs which went up and down for some time, shooting snow out of their tops. (It was quite soothing until I realised how fast they were going and that there are people in the way.)

The flight (which would never have taken off in England, bearing in mind I was in a tiny bi-plane full of plump businessmen and a screaming child who kicked the back of my seat) took off at 4.45 rather than 2.15. It was a bit annoying, but no-one got cross. Earlier that morning snow was ploughed off the road(s) before I was even awake, and no-one seemed to be falling over in the street.

At home, what is (obviously) a blizzard (for example I can no longer see the edges of the terrasse*) is described in gentle tones by my cohort, a French-Canadian pathologist who cuts his own hair, as "just a bit of snow". In the mornings, wearing only a pair of light shorts and a vest, he goes outside with a shovel and removes snow from the drive so that the car can get out. (The car that I can barely see as it is covered in snow.)

Every day I am thinking things like "I am sure -6 is quite cold", but then I find myself having conversations with Canadians who say things like "not long until winter!". I find myself wearing a floor length triple weight wool coat, hat, gloves, thermal underwear and a cashmere scarf; the Canadians are wearing t-shirts and suede jackets and congratulating themselves on getting their snow tyres in "before the cold starts".

Whilst my skin (fragile like a butterfly's wing made of warm terracotta) is falling off my face in giant flakes despite constantly covering myself in ever-thicker moisturiser**, Canadian women seem fine in the face area and like nothing is weird or wrong; they also seem to be able to walk on impacted ice on pavements in high heeled boots without falling over, finding only the time to look with pity at my knee-high Timberlands (with thermal lining).

But I will not give in. No way. I am staying in the colonies and I am going to see the winter through in the style of the early settlers. I will make it through the three months of darkness that Canada experiences from December to January. I will eat pickled beavers along with the rest of them. I will sip from bottles of anti-freeze mixed with Caribou and I will survive.




* A cunty word, granted, but less cunty than 'patio'.

** North American Readers Who Are Used To Extreme Cold: it is not usual to use Elizabeth Arden Eight Hour Cream as a day moisturiser. Please send help. I have aged 10 years!!! (In the face. I am still pleasingly immature.) It is tight and horrible and making me miserable.