Roger Pires January 27, 2011
When he's not offering his take on daily life, Roger Pires spends his days as a computer systems analyst. It's not exactly a glamorous calling but hey, it pays the bills. He enjoys hockey, canoeing, snowshoeing, and spending as much time as he possibly can outdoors. He lives in Udora with his wife and two kids, who are his prime inspiration for Ravenshoe Ramblings.
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Winter-Ish
“Roger, you have to see this.” I peered over the partition of my cubicle. My colleague was waving me across the aisle. Something of grave importance was flashing across his computer screen. An earthquake? A plane crash? The new Victoria’s Secrets line? I headed over to see riveting footage of a snowstorm. I could’ve just looked out the window and watched it live. Where was this anyway: Parry Sound? Timmins? Inuvik?
“Atlanta,” said Ish.
Mother Nature was behaving like a college freshman that’d been to a few keg parties. Her sorority hijinks made headline news on CNN. She must’ve mistaken the Mason-Dixon Line for the 49th parallel and sent a lifetime supply of snow to the lower eastern seaboard. Atlanta was the new Winnipeg. On the screen, a stretch of Interstate resembled a giant, frozen latte with vehicles scattered across it like chocolate shavings. Residents of the Peach State were shown enjoying various leisurely winter activities like digging out buried vehicles with a garden shovel and huddling in doorways for warmth. A city where winter means donning a long-sleeved shirt was under lockdown. In the background, a female voice shouted above the blizzard: “Our office has been closed for two days…the people down the street still don’t have power… this is a nightmare…”
“I used to sound like that,” said Ish, his voice a long way from sympathetic. His family’s first winter in Canada was an ordeal. “I had to go to work but my wife never left the house.” She must’ve felt like she’d been kidnapped by her husband and taken to a land where large men spit and it freezes in their beards. “I hated winter.”
“No snow where you came from, Ish?”
“Only in the mountains – and I’ve never been there.” The mountains are a place for political exile, not for building snowmen. A trip up there usually comes with a one-way ticket.
Ish recalls the day when winter ceased being the enemy. He was watching a documentary about a couple of guys who crossed the North on snowshoes. The images clawed their way into his psyche: frozen lakes framed by an endless expanse of forest; chiseled mountains towering above fairy tale valleys. Most of all, he remembers the men themselves.
“It was their faces; they expressed such freedom. I had never felt freedom like that in my life.” He was tired of being a prisoner of drywall. The next day he bought a pair of snowshoes. He took them down to the local park and a new life in Canada was born.
“What about the missus? Did she go along?”
“She made a face like this.” He imitates her. I would expect to see that look if I told someone I’d just run my fingers through the band saw. “She thought I was crazy.”
Ish loves winter now. Sometimes a little too much for his wife’s liking. “One day my in-laws were visiting. My wife had a very special lunch planned. But it was a great day for snowshoeing: beautiful and sunny. I came home one hour late. She didn’t talk to me for the rest of the day.”
“I don’t suppose your wife has come around to winter yet?”
“Hah,” he cackles. It’s the laugh of a man who’s spent many nights on the couch. “She is like a bear; she hibernates.” But there is hope yet. “My son wants to sign up for hockey. So far my wife has resisted; she says it’s too violent. He is ten now; he loves Sidney Crosby.”
Back in Atlanta, three men are pushing an ambulance out of a snow bank. In Canada, we brave worse conditions popping into town for a bag of milk. “We’re just not used to it…,” says the voice on CNN.
“Back home, they think we live like this,” says Ish nodding at the screen. “Of course, when I phone my family I don’t want to disappoint them.” He grins. “I tell them how cold it is. Sometimes I play… play…”
“Play it up?”
“Yes. It is always minus 20 and the snow is up to here.” He points to his eyebrows.
“But Ish, one quick look at the Weather Network and they’ll be calling you Pinocchio.”
“Ah, but they want to believe it. They wonder how I am able to survive winter in Canada.”
Then the Middle East’s answer to Farley Mowat gets an idea. “I’m going to call my wife and tell her I just bought a snowmobile.” He flicks off CNN and we both go back to our jobs of saving the free world from computer glitches. I look back over the partition; my colleague has the phone stuck to his ear. That must be one honkin’ couch at your place, Ish.
