Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Think of Canada and think of winter. Not the business-grey New York or London or Hamburg winter, tired and damp and chill to the bone, but the white and glistening and blue-sky winter, pristine and fresh, a bracing cold to flush a cheek pink. You’ve seen the Christmas cards. Snowflakes falling onto a village church steeple. Smoke curling from chimneys. Hoar-frosted window panes, fir trees. Red scarves flying from skaters on frozen rivers, canals. Little boys (and girls) stickhandling a hockey puck on a backyard rink. Snowmen and snowballs. A horse-drawn sleigh. Inuit in igloos. Polar bear cubs playing in snow banks. White rocky mountains bathed in the sun. Endless prairie, a blanket of white.

   Live in Canada, and know there is Winter…and Winter. It all depends on where you live. I, for one, have never seen a polar bear cub sporting in snow banks. Nor, quite possibly, have most other Canadians who live where it’s habitable. And a white Christmas-card Christmas is not, no it’s not, a Canadian given. It all depends on where you live. The country, which is the world’s second largest, spans 5,186 kilometres from east to west, 4,626 kilometres from north to south, and handles 5½ time zones. And so, while the polar bear cubs are sporting up north in Manitoba, bright flowers and green grass are growing out west in Victoria. In Vancouver, it’s raining. In Quebec City it’s snowing. Warm Chinook winds are wafting through Calgary. Toronto is slush. Regina is ice.

   Take, for example, the weather on Monday, February 5, 2007. The temperature, in degrees Celsius, was 9.8 above zero in Victoria, 11 above in Calgary, 14 below zero in Toronto, 4 below in Newfoundland, 8 below in Iqualuit, Nunavut…and…41.7 below (make that something like - 61 with the 31 km/h wind chill factor) in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Where I live. Proudly. Arrogantly.


   In much of the world, I don’t doubt, people have never even heard of the city of Winnipeg. When they hear Canada, they mumble Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, the Rockies. Understandable. Acceptable. When I hear Russia, I stop at Moscow and St. Petersburg and Tolstoy’s Yasnaya Polyana. But right here in Canada a non-Winnipegger reaction to the word ‘Winnipeg’, more ignorant still, is not understandable, not acceptable. These Canadians have heard of the city in a vague way, but have missed its point. Simply put, they have heard that Winnipeg is cold. Period. Very cold. Near-uninhabitable cold. All year. All the time. Some people call it Winterpeg, a vile canard, and think they are clever. Why just last week in Toronto we took a taxi from our downtown hotel out to the airport. The driver, chatty and charming, a retiree who came to Toronto from Latvia, looked at us – my husband BJ, daughter Jennifer and me – with a kind of horror-movie fascination when we answered the usual “Where you folks from?” airport-bound question. “WINNIPEG? You ARE? You LIVE there? Never been there myself, but I know something about it. Cold. Cold out there. Right?”

   Right. And wrong. Because the taxi driver had been led to believe that, like Alert or some other Arctic encampment up north of the North Magnetic Pole, Winnipeg and eternal winter are one. With education of the masses in mind, I explained to the taxi driver that yes, Winnipeg gets cold. But just in the winter, you know, as in other Canadian cities. And on occasion it gets very cold, not as in other Canadian cities. Then I bragged about our February 41.7 below, 61 below with the wind chill, and told him that perhaps once a year the 40 below lasts for one week. We call it a ‘cold snap’. He gasped. But you see, sir, that is part of our charm. Our mystique. Our character. Let me explain.

   Winnipeg is a city like no other, located smack in the middle of Canada, surrounded by prairie wheatfields in summer, flat white snow in winter. The nearest large city, Minneapolis in the United States, is 724 kilometers away. Isolated geographically, the people of Winnipeg have become self-reliant. They have established the world-famous Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Manitoba Moose hockey team. They enjoy tall trees and parklands, elegant old buildings, the three-star Michelin guide Manitoba Museum. Hollywood shoots films in the Exchange District, a national historic site with 20 blocks of restored old buildings. Portage Avenue, the main downtown thoroughfare which leads to the west, is one of the world’s widest streets. In summer, people paddle canoes or fish on the Assiniboine and Red rivers, which wind through the city. The weather is hot with sunny skies, beautiful sunsets in orange and pink. The winter, we know, is long and gets cold. And the city’s 650,000 people come from all over the world: beginning with Winnipeg where, 6,000 years ago, the Cree and Assiniboine Indians camped at the forks of the rivers. Then from America, Iceland, Europe, Ukraine, India, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Argentina…. And their food, which we all eat in restaurants. Exotic, no? Winnie the Pooh was named after Winnipeg.


   There are two Winnipeg winters. The cold. And the very cold. The cold winter goes to 27 below – when schoolchildren aren’t allowed outside for recess. The very cold goes from 27 below on down. Winter starts in early November with the first snowfall and ends in early April when the snow melts. Yes, it’s a long time. For the most part, the winter is beautiful and it is fun. A fresh snowfall on elm trees, frosty and powdery, is a photographer’s dream. Christmas is white. The frozen Assiniboine River becomes an extended skating and cross-country skiing path. And you want to talk Christmas cards? Come round on a Sunday. We live in a ninth-floor apartment on the Assiniboine. The Sunday view is of skaters and skiers, children with hockey sticks, scampering dogs, children tobogganing down the river bank slopes. The sky is blue. The sun is bright. The snow and ice glitter beneath it. Magic. Or the 7 a.m. view of a solitary soul, walking along the frozen path, perhaps with a dog, under a sky still dark. Or later on into April when spring is just springing, an ice jam on the Assiniboine, great unmoving blocks of bank-to-bank snow-covered shards, silent, then creaking.

   Magic or not, during our winter we must change our ways. Indoors, our homes are heated. If they were not we would freeze to death. Same thing with cars and workplaces. Getting to work means going from your heated home to your heated car to your heated place of work. Unless you’re a construction worker. Or taking the bus. Children look ready for combat in snow pants and warm puffy jackets, high boots and hats and weatherproof mitts, scarves which cover their faces. Television commercials warn against licking a pole or anything metal because the tongue will freeze onto the surface. If you cry outside, the tears freeze on your cheeks. We put antifreeze fluid in our car engines, plug in our cars so they will start in the morning. Our cold is a dry cold, which feels less cold than a damp cold. (When I lived in New York I felt colder at 7 degrees above zero Fahrenheit, with the wind blowing in from the sea, than I do in Winnipeg at 20 below.) But a dry cold also cracks your skin, particularly the soles of your feet, which become painful and sore. And forget about elegance. You can’t make a grand entrance wearing galoshes, and Manolo Blahnik’s winter shoe collection would get stuck in the snow.

   The danger is real. I remember a story about a Winnipeg woman who went onto her apartment balcony to shake out a rug, locked herself out, and was found frozen to death. Out on the highway drivers pack candles and matches, blankets and food, in case of car trouble. Stranded without, they will freeze to death. During the winter the 24/7 Environment Canada weather channel becomes an addiction. It lists the current temperature, wind velocity, humidity, visibility, forecasts — and the fearsome wind chill. Calculated when the winds exceed 10 kilometres an hour, the wind chill is the apparent temperature felt on exposed skin due to the combination of air temperature and wind. At minus 41.7 with a wind of 31 km/h, for example, frostbite will occur in five minutes, in 10 minutes at 30 below. So cover your face and hands, or stay in the house.

   We cover our face and hands and get on with it — some more maniacally than others. Cyclists attach snow tires, joggers wear face masks. Others, including me, play tennis indoors, swim indoors, run laps indoors. We truck on out to dinner parties, restaurants, the theatre, the mall. We complain. But we get on with it. Which brings me to the point about Winnipeg, the point missed by all those slushed-out Torontonians and rain-soaked Vancouverites. When I tell my old school friends in England, where I am from, about our cold snaps and car plugs, they are aghast, and look at me in a new, sort of fascinated light. I have become different from them. Our boarding school chilblains were nothing compared to five-minute frostbite. They cannot compete, and they know it. And so do I. With pride. And arrogance. The Winnipeg Winter, which doesn’t give a damn about your skin, your complexion, your would-be silken hair, your fatigue or your fear, has shaped a superior sub-species of no-nonsense survivors who, like an urban version of the grizzled Arctic explorer, can, and do, play the harsh hand that nature has dealt them. With a subtle smile. Spring is nigh.

   I hasten to say that nobody says they like the cold. Some people hate it. It’s a pain to spend an extra half hour dressing a child to go out for ten minutes. People of means tend to escape to the south – Florida, California, Mexico, Hawaii – for a couple of weeks or months to sit out the nadir. But most stay at home, watch the weather channel, complain, soldier on. Indeed there is a certain misery-loves-company camaraderie here. “Can you stand this?” we ask one another in empathy.

   Most people can. And most get used to it. Sooner or later, depending on the place they were born. The native Winnipegger, in blissful past ignorance, doesn’t rage against the gods. The Winnipeg winter is the way it is. The newcomer eventually comes out of shock.

   From the home front is Barry Thompson, a 74-year-old scientist, well-traveled, but born and bred in Winnipeg with a two-year stint in Montreal. “Who likes winter?” he asks. “It’s uncomfortable. The cold can be painful. So you wear heavy outer clothing, shoes that are lined with felt, you make sure your ears are covered, and cover your nose with the hood of your parka. You’re not going to die. You cope.”

   And the children? Same thing, with snowballs. Eleven-year-old Rebecca Lerner likes the sledding, the hot chocolate, and the snowball fights. Forget the rest. “I hate the wind and cold. I feel lousy, discouraged. Like oooh, another day.” Especially when doing school patrol duty at 30 below. For her seven-year-old brother Jonathan, recess becomes a no-win deal. When you stay inside at 30 below, “you can’t yell”. When you go outside at 25 below, “You have to stay all huddled up and then you can’t play”. Rebecca would still eat a Slurpee and ice cream at 40 below. Jonathan wouldn’t.

   And newcomers? A mini poll suggests the situation is hopeful. Some have no problem with winter. It took time for others.

   Sandy Smart, a physician from Melrose in Scotland, comes off as a stalwart, high marks for fortitude. He came to Winnipeg, with his wife Cathy and two small boys, in 1987. Melrose, population 2,200, is an idyllic town of narrow streets, imposing hills, an ancient abbey, the River Tweed. Spring is about emerging snowdrops and daffodils.
Winter is cold and “dreich”, which means long and drawn out, dismal and gloomy. “Miserable,” Sandy concurs. But there was skiing and tobogganing, sledging at the golf course and quarry, skating outdoors on the swan pond. Minus 4 is considered bitterly cold, minus 10 a disaster.

   And winter in Winnipeg? “I hate it, I hate it.” And yet.

   Before arriving in Manitoba, Sandy was not primed on the climate. “I think I knew it was going to be cold. So I brought my sheepskin jacket along. Well, it was okay in the spring and fall….” That very first winter? “I just remember it getting colder and colder and colder…a gradual thing.” And then he adapted. He and his boys, along with other families, played hockey and skated on the frozen Assiniboine, near his home. He skis to a limit of 20 below. And he walked his dog Roxburghe, a chocolate Labrador, for 4 miles every day (unless there was lightning). “Rox enjoyed the outdoors.” Even at 40 below, when ice pellets got into his paws. He sat until they thawed out then continued along. The dog refused to wear booties.

   Twenty years later, the winter scorecard is evening out. The negatives: shoveling snow, driving on ice, putting winter tires on his car, and “it does go on for an awfully long time.” The positives: enjoying the sunshine, the beauty of hoarfrost on a nice crisp day, a much increased enjoyment of spring, a preference for winter in Winnipeg over rain in Vancouver. He knows he has mellowed, and smiles at his brother’s response — “What the hell are you doing here?” — to a January visit at 40 below. Still. “If someone offered me a free trip to Antarctica to experience 50 below, I think I’d pass.”

   Gregoire Nyomba, a physician from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is a contented survivor. He was born and grew up in a  little village near a town called Mweka in Kasai province in the centre of Congo. Population: 200. Winter — and snow — didn’t exist. There was a 9-month rainy season with highs of 35, and a cooler dry season when 28 degrees meant COLD. During dry season, Gregoire cut crops with his farmer parents, hunted small animals for food, went to social games with singing and dancing, played soccer, climbed trees to pick fruit, set traps to catch game, and sometimes went fishing — “though fishing is mostly for women and girls.”

   He came to Winnipeg, via Kinshasa, Belgium, Phoenix and the United Arab Emirates, with his wife Esther and four children. He knew about Winnipeg from high school world geography, but his first encounter with winter and snow (albeit meager) had already happened in Belgium. The Winnipeg shock came after a full night of snow had covered the ground. “WOW!” his daughter Dido shouted out at the sight.

   Gregoire is neutral about the cold. “You live in a winterized home where the temperature is fine. You have to jump in a car and leave for work. You dress well, layer your clothing, park your car, walk outside for a few minutes — that’s when you feel you shouldn’t be here. But it’s short-lived.” He likes Winnipeg — the beauty of backyard snow seen through a window, of trees without leaves, of the blue sky “with no ceiling,” of spare time spent with friends or just reading and reading — and would not want to move. One Manitoba proviso. He will not go outside in Thompson, 739 kilometres to the north. During one visit he walked, clothed head-to-toe in warm winter clothes, across the street to the hospital. “The five minutes outside was just too much for me. My eyes were in tears from the cold when I got to the hospital. I decided never, never again would I venture outside in Thompson. It was literally five minutes. It was literally too much.”

   Zina Lazareck, an English language teacher from Vilnius, Lithuania, is a delayed enthusiast. She came to Winnipeg, with her parents, brother and small daughter Ada, in 1975. Vilnius, population 553,000, is hilly and beautiful. Winter is cloudy, and 15 below the idea of cold. The people love snow, skating and skiing.

   Zina has a great laugh when she recalls her arrival in Winnipeg — on January 29. She kind of knew Canada was cold, but didn’t realize it was Siberia-cold. She arrived late at night, was shoved into a car. She saw little houses, snow and the dark. Winnipeg seemed a very big village. At 10 o’clock in the morning, it hit. The day was sunny, the sky clear, the snow “so clean, so bright and very, very beautiful. It shone in the sun, in the light, it looked like it was covered in precious stones, diamonds.” Well. She went outside with her daughter and brother. They stopped breathing. They ran ten steps and ran back in. 30 below. She was wearing high platform fashion boots. And the snow was DEEP. “And the rest is history.” Zina quit going outside in high heels and mini-dresses. She obtained a bus schedule. She started to skate in the park. “And you know, we started kind of liking it. Kind of. I mean, what’s the alternative?”

   These days Zina “runs away” south for two weeks in the winter, but the rest of the time she walks every morning, for an hour and a half, in the snow in the park. And loves it.

   Sandy, Gregoire and Zina pass the Darwinian Winnipeg character test. But there is work to be done. In the March 30, 2007 Winnipeg Free Press, Julian McMahon describes working in Winnipeg on the Shannon Doherty movie “Another Day” in 2001: “This place is the weirdest place on earth. It’s cold for nine months of the year and nobody goes out. You can’t. I swear to God. Your eyeballs freeze over! There’s a thing on the news: Don’t go out. Your eyeballs will freeze over!”