We Canadians

Born and bred to this winter Arctic
wilderness that is Canada, we pride
ourselves in toughing out the windy blasts
that chill one's marrow, the sleeting rain,
dense ice fog and miles upon mountain
piles of unrelenting snow hushing
everyday winter lives in our country,
the Great White Northern region. As the
Inuit did, we wear mukluks and great,
down-filled parkas, finger-awkward
mittens and the coureur de boise toque.

We know the symptoms of frost-bite
and the dangerous plunge of internal
body temperatures. Our literature is
rich with tales of those who, setting forth
bravely in the midst of a raging snowstorm
mere metres from the security of home
never return alive. The danger of lake
and river ice too premature to hold has
seen too many slip into frigid waters,
trapped by an transparently unforgiving
ceiling, intransigent to self-rescue.

Ice fog moves silently and swiftly to
drown a landscape in opaque silver-grey
beyond which lies danger, and within its
unknown depths the innocently unheeding
the carefree unaware become trapped in
jungles of twisted, warped and burning
metal haplessly driven into unseen.
Storms now and again so persistently
unrelenting that frozen volumes topple
great trees, haul down fire-crackling hydro
lines and coat all surfaces with an
amazing layer of smooth, deadly ice.

At the best of times we revel in the
pristine white loveliness of our Northern
woods, traipse wide-legged on snowshoes,
zip freely along on skies and sleds,
exuberant calls muffled by the deep
landscape coverlet of the acquired
snowpack, the winter sun glinting
gold-and-silver through a veil of slowly
descending, starry clumps of frozen
white beauty on Canada's arras.