UPDATE: Classes are cancelled tomorrow because it’s cooooold. Brrrr. Places outside London seem to have been hit even harder than here with the white stuff.

Today is the kind of day when I enjoyed being a Victorian: yes, it might be cloudy and there is a good chance it is at least lightly raining, but it is above zero and the grass is still visible. I may have also been was one of those Victorians who enjoyed flaunting that in the face of the rest of Canada.

Now I really don’t like those people. Rest of Canada: I’m sorry for being like that. (Though I will probably return to that once I move back to Victoria!)

In semi-atoning for my gloating, I’ve come to some conclusions.

(Southern) Ontario freaks out about snow just as much as Victoria does. Which is strange, because they KNOW it is coming – it snows EVERY YEAR, whereas it usually catches Victoria by surprise. (“Will we have snow this year?” “I don’t know, we didn’t last year.”).

The difference of freak out is to about a magnitude of 10:

1cm of snow: Victoria freaks out and wishes they still had a snow plow in town. Police advise people to stay off the roads and some schools and businesses will likely close for at least part of the day.

10cm of snow: London finally deploys its full fleet of snow plows (this is the threshold that the city managers reported on the radio this morning), long after police have advised people to drive carefully if they have to leave the house. But they should probably stay home. Schools might be cancelled, depending on how much the snow is blowing.

Contrast this with my memories of high school in Lethbridge:

Cancelled school?!? What are you, a wuss? We’ll only cancel snow if the temperature is below minus 30 C. And then only if the busses can’t start.

…Or my college days in Prince George:

Why would we cancel college? You can still get here right? So Gillian cross-country skis to school.

Two things, posted on the Internet in close succession, from completely different sources, yet somewhat related and looking at some of the deepest needs and structural problems within our society.

The Foodbank, by cartoonist Dave Walker: The problem is just getting worse (and not only in the UK from where Dave Walker is drawing). People don’t have enough to eat around the world. This is one of the reasons why PWRDF started the Fred Says campaign, to highlight the problem of food security. But it is looking internationally. The problem is right in our own backyard and continuing to fill shelves of foodbanks helps, but it merely puts a bandaid on a gaping societal wound.

The Many Faces of Rock Bay Landing: An article in the Victoria Times Colonist about the shelter at which I used to work. Again, it outlines some of the deficits in our current social systems and the problems that has created for a lot of people. That shelter operates over capacity every day of the year. That alone should be enough to cause us to pause and rethink how we define ourselves as a community and country.

The sun came up pink this morning
Pink with shoots of golden orange
Peeking through the branches

Shoots of light infiltrating the sky
Blindly pushing through
That fog that comes on crisp winter mornings

Looking down into the city
Hazy shapes are but towering shadows
Visible from the hills

I lift my eyes to the mountains
To see where I might find help
But these are not mountains
These enclosing building

Rather than rising sun reflecting from snow-covered peaks
Towers of concrete absorb the light
And leave darkness

And yet
The sun is still here
Rising pink
Pink with glowing golden orange

A lot can happen in 10 years.

In the last 10 years I have moved first to Victoria and now to London.

I received an Associates Degree from the College of New Caledonia in Prince George, a Bachelors Degree from the University of Victoria, a Masters Degree from Yorkville University and am now working on another Masters at Huron College.

I hung out at a university in China for two months, spent three months backpacking through Europe with a friend and lived on a tall ship and circumnavigated the Pacific Ocean over 54 weeks while cooking for 35 other people. Thirty of the 36 countries I’ve visited have been in the last 10 years.

I’ve worked as an optometric assistant, cook on a sailboat, counsellor, and case manager in a homeless shelter.

Most of the friends that I currently have I have met in the last 10 years, and they’ve never met you.

And these are just the outward things that I can point to.

Would you still recognize me now? Ten years later? Would I still recognize you?