Winter finally came to Toronto this week, with snow falling — and promptly melting — on Saturday and Sunday. But lest the urbane people of Canada’s largest city forget how easy they have it compared to the hardscrabble peoples of outer Canada (the rest of the country), lest they even for one second mistake their light, pleasant winter wonderland for the shadowy thunderdome that is prairie winter, let us now check in on two of the prairies’ largest cities.
In Winnipeg this weekend, wind reached terrifying speeds and threatened people’s safety.
Blustery winds blowing construction materials around downtown prompted Winnipeg police to shut down Donald Street between Portage and Ellice avenues this morning.
[...]
Environment Canada is reporting south winds gusting to 70 km/h in Winnipeg this morning.
Meanwhile, a Saskatoon, SK man was seen disregarding the kind of law that doesn’t need to exist in most places as he drove his snowmobile on city streets. This is, of course, illegal, as any prairies resident knows. That kind of thing may fly in Kerrobert, who cares, but Saskatoon is a city, goddammit, and people need to get places faster than 20 km/h.
Police attempted to pull the man over and he — bravely, some might say, given his choice of vehicle — attempted to flee. His doomed escape failed, but one can hardly blame him for trying. As nearly all Canadian short fiction will attest, prairie winters are the cruelest things Mother Nature ever invented and they are well-known to drive sane people crazy.
So count your blessings, Toronto.
[image via waferboard/Flickr]