Growing up there was a Quebecois song I would hear on the radio that my mum and I would laugh about with a line that said, "Mon pays ce n'est pas un pays, c'est l'hiver" (my country is not a country it's Winter). It came to mind when hearing another classic Quebecois singer Robert Charlebois singing a song where he mentions coming back home and getting married to Winter. Snow and cold have an oversized role in the history of Quebec and Canada and being away from the Montreal winters I have to admit I have breathed a guilty sigh of relief when I cross back across the border to the gentler US weather on my Winter trips.  But there are also pangs of envy when I see a fresh blanket of snow covering the cars and sidewalks in photos from back home. Where I live now snow is a brief and increasingly rare event. Winter in my childhood was snowsuits, fur-lined boots, and 6-foot snowbanks lining the streets from November until late February. Being alone in a suburban house with 4 kids and no car nearly broke my mom after they first moved to Canada. She tells the story of being taken home on the back of a Ski-Doo from Fairview mall after being stranded after one storm (if you don't know what a Ski-doo is you aren't Canadian). We had more snow then. Saying that feels like the delusional rantings of an old person but in this case it's objectively true. It's less cold and less snow falls...Records are being broken as we careen into this weird warmer future. The temperature of the planet had changed permanently and being told this we all kind of shrug and get on with our lives. But it's real. When we have a big snowstorm yes, there's a happy childhood nostalgia element (I remember listening breathless to the school closure announcements, silently praying mine will be on the list of closed schools). But it also takes on a bigger significance. A kind of hope that the bigger battle is not quite over yet. Maybe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukbGVeEH0vY