How hot is it?
If you, like our current president, are a big fan of the weather, you know that it is hotter this year than a dinosaur’s’ belly back 25,000 years ago. The Weather Channel has the film to prove it and Joe is in the video. Just to lighten the stress of sweltering, here are a few events from a cooler country that happened way back in 2019 when I was alive. The University of British Columbia every winter sponsors a big snowball fight where all the students are invited to throw snowballs at each other and frolic in the white stuff as tension breaker in the dreary depths of Canda’s winter. You can picture it being the talk of the town at the local Tim Horton’s for weeks ahead of time. You’ve got the local paper writing preview articles. You’ve got scouting reports. The media said it is “a serious snowy showdown,” which was expected to draw thousands on Wednesday. On the day of the big event the college sent out an alert: UBC’s social committee said the Snowball fight was cancelled because there was too much snow in the area. I’m just worried that maybe Canada has lost their edge. Maybe they’re getting a little soft on us. Back in the day, they would have either rode their moose or snowmobile to the snowball fight if there was a blizzard on the weather report. Worst case scenario, you just strap on the snowshoes and hike to that brawl. Now they wonder why no NHL team from Canada has won the Stanley Cup since 1993?
How cold was it? Every year the city of Montreal has a winter festival. It is very elaborate set up at a fairgrounds. There are rides and games and refreshments and they even build ice houses and amusement structures from blocks of snow that are the size of regular buildings in the city. The annual Fête des neiges at Parc Jean-Drapeau was cancelled in 2019 due to the extreme cold and winter storm warning. This is the first time in 10 years that activities for the winter festival have been cancelled due to weather, according to the park commission. They said that the decision was made in an effort to maintain the safety of the public as well as employees and volunteers who make the festival possible. Environment Canada issued a winter storm warning for the greater Montreal area and predicted as much as 8 inches of snowfall through Sunday. Temperatures were expected to dip as low as -30 F with windchill. No wonder they never had dinosaurs up in the Great White North.
But real Canadians were undaunted in 2019. Allow me to blow the dust off a cliché, “With great adversity comes great opportunity,” That same winter a group of people were involved in a massive traffic blockage on Highway 40 near L’Assomption, Quebec — about 45 kilometers northeast of Montreal. The pile up involved as many as 50 cars scattered in every direction on and around the roadway. The line of waiting cars was tremendous and they waited, some for as long as four hours, for emergency crews to clear the scene. The true spirit of Maple Leaf youth shown as they sat in the cars, they turned a pretty garbage situation into a much more pleasant and memorable one. The boys went into the trunks of their cars, retrieved their sticks and some equipment. They cleared a spot on the road of cars and a hockey game broke out. Several people suffered minor injuries as a result of the accident; No word yet on the ailments sustained during this intense game of puck, though.
Canadian thoughts
An American couple is driving through Canada and stops at a gas station to fuel up.
As the man goes into the station to pay, his wife calls out to him, “Ask them where we are!” So the husband walks in, pays, and asks, “By the way, where are we?”
To which the attendant answers, “Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.”
The man goes back to his car and the wife asks, “Where are we?”
“He doesn’t speak English” replies the husband.
My friends and I visited Canada for the first time. We went into a rowdy bar in Toronto. While we were there a fight started and a hockey game broke out.
A patron in a Montreal restaurant turned on a tap in the washroom and got scalded.
“This is an outrage,” he complained. “The faucet marked ‘C’ gave me boiling water.”
“But, Monsieur, ‘C’ stands for chaud – French for hot. You should know that if you live in Montreal.”
“Wait a minute,” roared the patron. “The other tap is also marked ‘C’.”
“Of course,” said the manager. “It stands for cold. After all, Montreal is a bilingual city.”
In Canada, they use “B.C.E.” instead of “B.C.”
It stands for Before Christ, Eh?
August 15th Birthdays
1991 – Emmie Buckner, 1994 – Danielle Morrow, 1990 – Jennifer Lawrence, 1969 – Debra Messing
1972 – Ben Afleck, 1769 – Napoleon Bonaparte, 1971 – Anthony Anderson, 1980 – Carlos Pena Vega