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One of the keys to happiness is to live in a place you love, or at the very least, not live in a place you hate for 5-6 months of the year. Yet every winter I am astounded at the number of people who seem to truly despise the season. I submit without comment my open letter to JeffGilhooly, the host of my favourite morning radio show, regarding his derision of Canadian winters:
You might also enjoy:Dear Jeff:
I love your show; I really do. For over a decade, the St. John’s Morning Show has been the soothing banter I have chosen to wake up to. In a sea of vacuous FM drivel and mindless pop, CBC Radio One offers a talk radio shelter from the storm. With the possible exception of Seven of Nine from Star Trek and my darling wife, there’s no voice I’d rather wake up to in the morning than yours.
But lately, something has really been grinding my gears. It seems that the Morning Show team has fallen into some sort of geographical dissonance and has totally lost track of their location on planet earth. I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard you describing a recent spate of unseasonably warm weather in a positive light, and treating the return to more seasonally appropriate weather as unwelcome. The same thing seems to happen every time there’s snow in the forecast, or the temperature dips below zero- these normal, predictable and expected weather patterns are treated with disdain, like you were expecting Fancy Feast but got Friskies instead. It’s possible that I’ve been totally misunderstanding your descriptions of the weather. Maybe the Morning Show likes to play opposite games, where bad is good and cold is hot, and you eat steak for breakfast and wear socks on your hands. Or maybe this is some newfangled slang that kids these daysare using- like phat meaning cool, or wicked meaning good, or fo’ shizzle my nizzle meaning whatever it is that it means. Maybe you like to text your CBC friends things like “OMG, teh warm r totally good. It ruinz my snowmans!”. But I really don’t think this is the case- I think you may just be adopting and reflecting the prejudices of a vocal minority of your listeners who like to grumble and gripe their way through winter. I’ve never quite understood those people; if they really hate snow and cold that much, I can’t help but think that they’ve made a prodigiously bad choice of places to call home. If you don’t like bananas, you shouldn’t live with monkeys.
You see, we live in Newfoundland. During winter, it snows. It gets cold. Roads get icy. Driveways fill up with snow. Kids get their tongues stuck to signposts. It’s the natural order of things. This isn’t anything new, either- it’s been this way for quite some time, maybe even as long as six thousand years, if you listen to Sarah Palin. Yup, we’ve got a winter climate. That’s just the way it is. In fact, many of us choose to live here precisely because we get “real” winters. Skiing, snowmobiling, ice fishing, skating, tobogganing, snowshoeing, making snow angels, and peeing your name in the snow are all activities that look downright absurd when it’s 15 degrees and green outside. Those balmy days in February are a destructive force that robs people of their winter pursuits, of pleasures that they’ve suffered through months of summer and fall to enjoy.
I’ll be the first to admit that there are certain weather phenomena that can be legitimately fit within the “good” or “bad” dichotomy- a tsunami, for example, could be justifiably described as being “bad”. Ditto for hurricanes, tornadoes, and Biblical plagues like raining frogs or a hail of fire. Snow and cold temperatures in the middle of winter, however, cannot be said to fall within this category.
I’m not saying that you have to like winter- I have come to accept that an appreciation of winter is one of those issues that fundamentally and irreconcilably divides humanity. It’s like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or the divide between those who like Smarties and those who are M&M aficionados. We’re not going to see a resolution to the conflict any time soon. But please, stop injecting your otherwise admirable Morning Show with nonsensical value judgments about the weather- if not for me, then for the kids who listen to your show and don’t need to have their love of snow days and sliding hills polluted by grown-up grumpiness. If not, I’ve got a snowball with your name on it.
Wishing you warm mittens and snowy skies,
MGL
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
I don’t get that either- it’s supposed to snow in winter! If ya don’t like it, move to Bermuda!
I know you’re excited about your new day-job, but you may have missed your calling as a full-time writer. This is great!
While I agree with most of what you are saying, I have to point out that it is almost part of our culture to bitch and complain about the weather. In some ways, our collective discussions of the weather is a unifying topic for all Newfoundlanders. Along with sports, it is probably the number one small-talk conversation and/or ice-breaker. Now that there is no longer local “professional” hockey, I find myself having to rely more on my discussions and complaints related to the weather. So, as a resident Newfoundlander, I feel it is my god-given right to bitch about the weather….just because I live here doesn’t mean I can’t complain about the weather
I haven’t found a place yet (in my admittedly limited travels) that has perfect weather year-round, no matter what you consider “good” or “bad”
When we had the good fortune of living in St. John’s, I can’t say I enjoyed all the snow, but there were other things that made up for the unpleasant (to some) amounts of the white stuff- particularly the people- and we wouldn’t have wanted to leave. And then there were the summers… I’m not a hot weather person (I’ll take the snow over a heat wave, thanks), and I found the warm-but-breezy days and cool nights to be worth waiting for, even through long winters.
Even if I liked hot weather, I can’t see moving to Florida (the only really winterless place I’ve visited). There are too many golf carts, too much disney, and a ridiculous number of people wear their pants up to their armpits.
Also, I second Melanie’s comment.
Oh! I love it. I hope they bring in Angry Ingrid Fraser to read it full of vitriol.
The only thing you missed is Geoff’s prosumer meteorological readings of Environment Canada’s radar and satellite images of Eastern Canada. “Looks like that system is only about an hour outside of St. John’s now given what the radar has been doing in the last hour.”
I like Smarties!!!!!!
MGL - I love this letter, but am curious - have your feelings changed at all since writing this?