It was the winter of 1976. I was seven the day I walked home from school in a blizzard that struck the city without warning. Home was but five or six miles away. It felt like I was walking half way around the world and back. I could only see a few steps ahead of me and that was when the frigid, roaring wind wasn't blowing the snow into my face. Sometimes it was indeed snow that coldly slapped my cheeks. Sometimes it was ice pellets stinging my eyes like tiny hornets blurring my vision. Though I was hurrying as fast as I could, the knee-deep snow slowed me down to almost a crawl. Somehow, I found my way home on that dingy, grey afternoon. It was a horrible experience. To be young, lost and alone.
Almost every Canadian has a story like the one I just told. If there is anything we know, it is snow. Flurries. Packing. Powdered. Pellets. Blizzards. Frost. Drifts. We've seen about everything in Jack Frost's bag of tricks...and then some. So, if a major motion picture like 'Vertical Limit' can't even get the appearance of the white stuff right - which it can't in key cave scenes - they are in for a rough time in the Great White North. Those feathery flakes and that sprayed on crusty crap from an aerosol can we use to decorate the inside of our windows at Christmas may cut it in sunny California but not here.
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