Having spent the first fifty years of my life in the UK (except for three years in Belgium and Germany), I was a temperate man. That is temperatures lower than -4C and higher that +20C were somewhat of a novelty for me. I also had that English resistance to the damp, especially having spent fifteen years in the village of Blewbury, Oxfordshire, which was a mass of natural springs and chalk streams, and permanently moist. Then I moved from the coastal climes to Canada’s Great Lakes, and the continental weather systems that lurk there.

We’re sat here today, February 16th, watching the snow fall and having been experiencing sub-zero temperatures for weeks, probably six so far, I wasn’t counting. While this part of Southern Ontario doesn’t get hit with really cold weather, it did bring to mind a trip I made to Canada in 2008, when I was still living in England.

My intended had said, “Hey, come over for March Break”, for she was a school teacher, “We’ll rent an RV and have a drive around Quebec”. Now I may not be the sharpest knife in the box, but I looked at the calendar, and I looked at the prevailing weather in that fine Province, and realised that we were not going to experience fine, balmy, RV-friendly weather in March. We scotched the RV idea (a wise move as it turned out), and booked hotels in Montreal and in Quebec City instead. All very exciting.

But when my intended picked me up at Lester Pearson Airport in Toronto, with me just having flown over the frozen wastes of Quebec, the snow started to fall. My intended was driving, not her favourite pastime to be sure, and the weather started to get worse and worse. We were expecting to stay in downtown Montreal that night, but to be honest, we really should have stopped off on the way, but we didn’t. The run up the Ontario Highway 401, and the Autoroute du Souvenir, was 550 Km and should have taken about five and half hours. In the event, it took us nine hours, and we didn’t get into Montreal until at 1:30am. My driver was done in. Still, we did get there.

The following morning we ventured outside. I’d left London and it had been +12C, now in Montreal’s Old Town, it was -20C, and I could feel every one of those degrees below zero. The snow looked nice, and watching the skaters on the outdoor rink was lovely, but I wasn’t really prepared for that level of cold, especially given that the wind was wicked. While we had slept, the snow came in some more, and dumped on the city, making it look wonderful, but there was only so much snow I could take when feeling so, so cold. More snow fell, but we went out to a little restaurant that evening, walking between the shoulder-high mounds of snow, and I marvelled that the city seemed to be functioning well despite the white stuff, but then I realised that this was pretty normal for Montreal in winter. I made a mental note to never return to the city between the months of October and April!

The following day we drove along the St Lawrence River to Quebec City. Yet more snow had fallen and it was waist deep in parts of the old town. It was still seriously below zero as well, but I was starting to acclimatise. Quebec City, though, was a revelation. When we arrived the snow was deep, although paths had been cleared. But, by the following morning, the snow on the roads and sidewalks had gone, almost completely. No, we hadn’t experienced a sudden thaw, but the City Fathers had brought moving equipment in and trucked all the excess snow away. I asked the English speaking co-owner of the hotel what had happened, and he explained that the snow is carted off and dumped in a field on the edge of town. It can still be there in May, he said.

The run back to Southern Ontario was actually trouble free. We did it without an overnight, while sharing the driving, all 1075Kms. The weather had improved, and it was even a wee bit warmer, so my English bones were beginning to feel a bit happier. I learned a lot on that trip, not least that Quebec can be a very cold place in winter. I also learned that a short period of acclimatisation is a good idea if you’re coming straight from a temperate climate.

Fifteen years of living in Canada and I have become accustomed to the sharp winters, and the compensating warm summers of course. Indeed, trips back to the Old Country have had me making that most Canadian of observations about England, “Goodness, everything feels damp”. I reckon I have acclimatised now.