Stop Filing It Under Lame

I understand I am from Canada, and from Western Canada at that. Cold weather is nothing new. After a slow start to spring and only a handful of days of summer, we were ready to ease nicely into a mild fall, but somehow we were unexpectedly hit with sub artic temperatures last week, and with each passing day it seems to get colder and colder. I think this morning was the coldest at a bone chilling –38*C (-36.4*F) with the wind chill. Even at lunch, four hours later, with the sun brightly shining, it only made its way up to –25*C (-13*F) with the wind chill still –30*C.

I understand that only a handful of you can really understand and appreciate how cold that really is. It is the kind of cold that takes your breath away and even with multiple layers of sweaters, coats, scarves, mittens and boots it somehow isn’t enough to keep you warm for more than a minute. And on those really cold morning, after staying in your warm bed for as long as possible, the cold makes you want to just sit in your car and cry from the drastic temperature change.

I, for one, miss global warming.

But for generations we have been dealing and coping with this cold weather. Here is the story.

Alfred and Fanny Garner, along with most of Fanny’s family was asked by John Taylor to come to Canada to settle. Leaving their Utah home they made the long trek to settle in Southern Alberta. Probably, just like my mother, they were horrified with how large the sky was, were puzzled by jam in a can, and learned the real pronunciation of shone, but settled in and helped to establish the town of Caldwell.

After a particularly cold winter, some of the Utah natives had enough and abandoned their Canadian homes for the Southern climate. Alfred and Fanny stayed, and now five generations later we still live only a couple of hours from their Caldwell home.

I really do love living in Canada. Where else can you get universal health care and butter tarts? But I guess the cold is just something we have to deal with. There is no wonder why the Canadian Olympic team’s uniform included mittens. Besides don’t you have to love a country that thinks 35*C (95*F) is unbearably hot?