The Seated View

Whoop-whoop-whoop!! Alarm bells are clanging, warnings proliferate, anxiety rises, and maybe I should call in sick? What’s all this about? The notification that we’d be getting “major snow” starting Sunday evening. If you take a closer look at the above screenshot from The Weather Network (click to enlarge), you’ll see that Toronto was looking at the following: Sunday afternoon: less than 1 cm Sunday evening: 1-3 cm Sunday overnight: close to 5 cm Monday morning: 1-3 cm In other words, my fair city would get a grand total of 8-12 cm. For those of you who only speak Imperial measurements, that’s 3-4.7 inches. The media called it a “ winter storm ,” The Weather Network said going somewhere to watch the Super Bowl would not make for an easy drive “ or a safe one .” Environment Canada suggested limiting travel to the essential kind. Because we were going to get “up to” 15 cm of snow. When did 15 cm become “major snow”? And this is where I’m going to s...

I'm always a little startled by the suddenness of Canadian spring. Last Wednesday, I was wearing socks and winter sweaters and two days after that, it was warm enough for bare feet, T-shirts and shorts. Not that I wear shorts, but a lot of other people were.  Everything's a little extra sudden this year. I use the side street below my window as a measurement of how far along spring is. The hedge on the west side is the first thing in the neighbourhood to go green and means the official start of the season. The poplars on the side are the last to pop, marking the official full embrace of spring. This year, both are popping up the same time. After such a long winter, it is nothing but joy to see green growing everywhere and flowers blooming. Naturally, I headed out with my new camera, looking forward to christening it with spring rather than winter pictures. I started out on Sugar Beach when the willow trees were in that just-popped stage where they look like clouds of deli...

I have a vague recollection of having had a wee rant about a similar event before, not just on the phone to friends or in person, but quite possibly in this space sometime last winter, but it bears repeating. So we’ve had some snow coming and by the time you read this, it's arrived, made the morning commute a slushy mess and a few hours ago turned into rain. And also by the time you read this, we'll have spent the previous 2-3 days reading about the coming snow, watching the talking heads on CP24 talk to politicians and City staff about snow preparedness, to Canadian Tire employees regarding what you can do to make your car winter ready and extended discussion on what to include in a safety kit in the trunk of your car in case you get stuck in the masses of snow and have to spend several days in your car whilst trying not to gnaw off you arm from the hunger. The Star calls it Snowmageddon, The Weather Network has done regular Storm Watch segments since Monday morning and...

Bitter. Resentful. I just want to cry. These are words and phrases used in conversations with friends, acquaintances and total strangers when talking about Toronto 's weather in the past couple weeks. Because it's cold. Really, really cold. 470 degrees (at least) below average for this time of year. But why would October be any different? All year, it's been like this, most of the summer was like that and that's one of the things that makes it even harder to take. Because we had maybe four weeks of real Toronto summer, the kind where you gad about in light summer dresses, keep the fans going and bitch about the humidity. Except this year, nobody bitched, mostly because we spent May, June, July and the first half of August bitching about it not being warm. And in the third week of September the temps dipped again and by now, it's as cold as it normally is in November and we haven't had that week in October that we almost always have that feels li...