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Winter:
a season for walking
dallashansen.com
Februrary 18, 2006
Monday night, as the flurries fly, I decide to walk downtown to my
weekly meeting with the Transit Riders' Union. The local history
room of the Millennium Library is my destination, Banning and Ellice
my departure point.
“You're walking?” my mother asks.
“Are you crazy?”
During Winnipeg's previous winter preview, on October 5, I was
shocked into buying a heavy-duty, down-filled Norwegian parka,
which I hadn't been able to wear since. But Monday night I stroll
ensconced in warmth, my hood pulled round my head and a light breeze
kissing my cheeks with flakes of snow, grinning with delight at my
imperviousness to the elements while observing how others are trying to
cope.
Some, teenagers mostly, are clad in nothing more than sneakers and
sweatshirts―attire better suited for an evening in September.
Others―mostly walking from buildings to vehicles or vice versa―are
wearing gloves but no head coverings, and nylon
“winter” jackets more appropriate for the cold
season in Reno, Nevada―not Winnipeg. Their faces carry varied
expressions of suffering and misery. But one fellow I espy,
pedalling a skinny-tired road bike, looks content, clad as he is
in an acrylic mask, plastic goggles, fleece pants,
Gore-Tex boots and jacket.
Living in Winnipeg and complaining about winter is too obvious, even
cliché. Badmouthing snow and hating the cold comprises an
attitude that guarantees months of misery each year―rather like living
in southern California and hating the sun.
At the Millenium Library's local history room, the TRU Winnipeg crew
and I make mandatory mention of how underground rail transit would be
able to operate unimpeded in even the worst winter conditions before
turning our attention to how the urban inhabitants of Winnipeg's
1890-1920 boom period endured city life without skywalks,
underground concourses, heated parking garages, or indeed even
automobiles.
They wore a lot of wool―hats, heavy coats, sweaters―but even with
today's technological advances in synthetic fabrics and insulation,
the average Winnipegger of 1920 was better equipped for the
climate than the average Winnipegger of today. Most of us have just
resigned ourselves to shutting in for the winter, with the outdoors
viewed as something to endure painfully between exiting the automobile
and getting indoors.
Our harsh winters are frequently cited as a key reason for widespread
automobile ownership. But relatively few of our cold-weather
brethren among cities in the former USSR actually drive.
Certainly, I'm happy at not having to operate a motor vehicle in the
winter―slippery roads are dangerous, and fitting behind the wheel and
under a seatbelt in a Norwegian down-filled parka is an excercise in
claustrophobia.
No matter how many winters I've seen, a fresh snowfall seems
unfailingly beautiful, the air so crisp and fresh. I arrive home
from the library in less time than it takes to hear two movements from
Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony, and immediately, excitedly, begin
shovelling. Decades ago, when walking was commoner, each
homeowner would shovel the walk out front; today, on my block,
it's just me and a few holdouts. Sometime before I was born, the
City took over from the city responsibility for sidewalk snow removal.
The exercise is so invigorating I'm obliged to shed the down parka,
and just as I finish my girlfriend calls. She lives nearby and asks
whether I might like to meet for a walk. When I find her she has
brought along her four year-old Terrier, and we spend the next hour
outside in a schoolyard, playing with the pooch, who enjoys chasing
us and being chased, and catching snowballs mid-air between his jaws.
We tire before the dog does, and I'm suddenly recruited to shovel my
girlfriend's walk too. Somehow a chore that I dreaded in my youth now
brings me immense satisfaction. I don't hate the snow, the cold,
or the shovelling, even if, the next morning, I'll have to
shovel both our walks again.
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