By Brian Lee
At certain times of the year, it can be unsettling to take a drive and rediscover how quiet our area can be. Last week I drove around Garden Bay and passed only a couple of cars the entire time. No one walking. Not even a dog.
On the way home I stopped for a burger in Kleindale and was told I was the first customer in three hours. So, it was a bit of a shock to drive into Madeira Park a few minutes later to find the shopping centre humming with activity.
I thought of those frantic Friday afternoons in July as I scoured the lot for a parking stall. When I finally made it to the credit union, I asked one of the clerks what the deal was. She explained in an exasperated tone, "It’s been like this all day. People are stocking up before it snows."
Stocking up before it snows? The mid-November forecast was unclear but predicted freezing and a 60 per-cent chance of precipitation. It didn’t sound like a weather bomb but it was enough to push the entire town to buy extra potato chips.
While the rest of the country deals with a perpetual ice age for six months of the year, we panic when we hear it might freeze. And it’s not just our collective paranoia acting by itself.
West Coast media were abuzz with weather forecasts and tips on how to endure the weather phenomenon. It dominated the news in what can only be described as absurd. Would television news stations in Montreal be making such a fuss?
It was embarrassing. There’s a reason easterners make fun when winter weather gets lost and stumbles our way.
But then it did. The dusting over the weekend was followed by a clear, deep freeze and then more snow Sunday night.
I ventured out Monday afternoon and was presented with the aftermath of the morning commute. Cars slumped in ditches, stories of multiple car pileups in the predictable places and cancelled appointments all around.
And no foolin’, it really was slippery out there. It made me think how we (and the rest of the country) don’t give ourselves enough credit for how challenging it is to drive after it snows around here.
It’s assumed every time a car slides of a snowy road here it’s been driven by a nincompoop. For the most part, those same smug hecklers drive flat, arrow straight roads kept clear by armies of snowplows.
I’d like to see a typical Leafs fan tackle one of our banked hills, layered with damp snow on top of the previous day’s melt ice. I’m willing to bet we’d gain back a little respect.
So, I stopped to snap a few photos of the abandoned vehicles littering the ditches. It was news but, more importantly, many of them were familiar to me and I hate to miss an opportunity to embarrass people I know.
But would it be right to embarrass the local fire chief by publicizing his driving missteps?
So, for once, I used restraint. (You’re lucky, Bill.)