There is nothing useful on this web site.
Even though the internet is the source of all truth, the only truth here is that everything else is a lie.
We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.
All art is quite useless.- Oscar Wilde
Calgary - We were home for the holidays, and yes, the world is turning upside down.
My home province Alberta is one of the biggest generators of greenhouse gases in the world, thanks to the honest business of oil extraction from the tarsands.
In spite of these efforts to warm the world and keep it moving, it is a bone chilling -28°C here as the plane touches down. It gets a little better over the next few days, maxing out at -19°C for a time, with brillant sunshine, crunchy snow, and conversations captioned in the clouds that billow from each breath.
Yes, it is beautiful in a way. I check the weather back in Holland - it's +8°C a and sunny! I smile for the camera. I think about brass monkeys.
It is a white christmas across Canada, the first in 37 years! While we personally manage to avoid most of the chaos, cancelled flights and lost luggage that so many other air travellers experienced, we were able to share in the simultaneous boredom and terror of driving on Calgary's extensive network of skating pathways, which, under more favorable weather conditions, serve as roads.
Calgary, a 'can-do' city, an economic dynamo where 30 story buildings are completed in a year, or a Blockbuster Video franchise in a week, is third-world dysfunctional when it comes to snow removal. We saw one snowplow in the six days we were there. Most of the roadway icepack had yet to be blessed with the royal sprinkle of gravel.
The city calls this a no-pavement policy. That means they are allowed to have no-pavement - snow can cover everything. Ha-ha. That's pretty funny in a bureaucratic humour kind of way, innit?
The 30 minute commute becomes a 90 minute crawl; the auto body repair shops have a month long backlog, and the taxi fares (if you could find a taxi) are double the normal fare after the time charges overtake the distance tariffs.
Calgary, an equal opportunity city, often promotes village idiots to city council, where they are trained to refuse any expense that may be worth while (like cleaning roads). Taxes can then be used to purchase buildings that should have been condemned and demolished years ago (i.e. $10 million to purchase the flea-trap establishment called the Cecil Hotel). This amount is almost 1/2 the annual snow removal budget for the city.
Take Diane Colley-Urqhart, please. When asked for comments on the many complaints the city had received (just dial 311) regarding icy streets she responded with "Like it or lump it people, Calgary is a winter city..."
All due respect madam, but a winter city should know how to deal with a little snow. Calgary does not. Your city would be fighting for the bottom spot if anyone were to rank snow removal in Canada.
Our next stop is Montreal, which has the same collective snowfall as Calgary, except this snow has fallen within the last 48 hours. We see at least 8 snowplows or graders in the ½ drive from the airport.
This kind of compensates for the 1½ hours we have waited for our luggage. It eventually arrives on the wrong carousel. The flight number has long disappeared from the monitors above the carousels. Keep checking here and there. Is it possible to lose everyone's luggage on one flight? We're talking Air Canada here. Nobody goes crazy. Everyone has a right to. Welcome to Canada!
There are far more pieces of unclaimed luggage sitting around then there are passengers. While it would have been much easier and faster to help yourself to someone else's luggage, everyone waits for their own. The luggage you take might be totally filled with dirty laundry, like mine is. Think about that for a while. You think about a lot of silly things standing around for that long.
The snow plow convoys here are most impressive. Graders, plows, snow blowers and large trucks to carry away the snow with amazing efficiency. Even the side streets were cleared within a few days.
But then comes the freezing rain. We go for the walk in the park after and it sure is no walk in the park. It is almost terrifying at times, as you move very, very slowly out of fear of falling down… again.
The day following the freezing rain, there are 100km winds and a temperature of -10°. These Montrealers, they are a tough lot. In the west we would say they "take it all in stride", a great expression if you're riding a horse, but here you really have to "take it all and slide" (groan).
I enjoy French and Latin culture, food, hospitality and language. In this weather it's best served indoors with heaping portions of central heating. I understand much of the culture, food and warmth but almost none of the language. It doesn't matter.
Many visits and many people visiting. French and Spanish, and the whole latin family of languages somehow make it possible for 8 people to have 4 conversations around a single table, at elevated sound levels, and everybody likes it this way!
At one point I try to watch The Simpsons marathon on the new flat screen TV. I can't hear, but it does not matter, it's still funny. Life is good.