canada: northern nation with an identity crisis.

It is, yet again, a grey and dreary day out here on the brush plain and to be completely honest with you I'm starting to get a bit sick of this.


Not that I'm one to complain about cold weather - in general I'm the first one to complain when the temperature beats 25 degrees Celsius. As my excuse I'll cite my northern genetics - when your ancestors hail from the hills of Scotland and the swamps of northern Ontario you tend to be predisposed to cool and wet.


But this is simply ridiculous - the only time I've seen the sun for days now has been when it comes out to blind me on the drive to work in the morning. If mother nature's having a laugh it's about damn time she got over herself and smartened up.


So, as a silent protest, I've decided to wear sandals all week long.

I can tell you that it hasn't been easy - there's always that tense moment when I have to cross the snow bank between the school doors and the parking lot. So far I've only fallen in twice, and the frostbite went away quickly both times.

My students look at me like I'm nuts, and maybe their right, but this is Canada - we have a very long tradition of pretending to live somewhere in the tropics. Perhaps that's just our way of recovering from the nine months of winter.

I read somewhere once that Canada, alone amongst the northern nations, spends a lot of time and effort pretending to be in the south.

I see their point - Scandinavians spend a lot of time whipping each other in saunas (actually, I'm not too sure about this one - I think I saw it on an episode of Inspector Gadget); Russians adopt enormous fur hats as part of their national dress; Canadians insistently wear board shorts from the vernal equinox to the winter solstice (at which point the risk of death from wind chill becomes far too great and we switch to capris or those zip-off cargo pants).

Maybe it's because we're a young country - still insecure with our place in the world - but I think that before we can really come to a consensus on things like Canadian identity we need to make our peace with the north.

"But Stu," you ask, "if you're all down with the north and whatnot, why are you still wearing sandals? Is this not a tad hypocritical?"

Well dear reader, I suppose it is. But consider this - I may be wearing sandals, but I'm also wearing two sweaters and a toque.

Which makes me significantly more in tune with the north than the kid I saw earlier today wearing board shorts and a t-shirt.

But not as in tune as the other guy I saw wearing moose-hide moccasins and a sheepskin hat.

Regards from Alberta's brush plain.