Toronto weather:

During the summer everyone is in a hurry to live it up, with the meal places divided into those with and those without a patio. Dining on a patio in summer is a quintessential Toronto thing to do, just like in Australia searching for a shade in summer. Like the nature, Torontians are bustling in summer to quickly get all the summer experiences before the cold weather hits.

Autumn is brief but glamorous, running over a few weeks from the late summer to the early winter; from warm bright changing colours of trees to the cold wet asphalt smell of rain; from a short sleeve shirt during the day to a light jacket on top of that shirt in the evening. The days fold like a domino until they run into early winter with its cold winds.

Once the cold winds arrive, the winter starts to claim the land like a tide, wave by wave rolling on with snow, wind and ever colder temperatures, then retreating back for a short while to uncover a few crisp sunny days of late autumn, just to come back with more snow and more wind and colder temperature until eventually it is there to stay. The air does not smell of autumn anymore. Gone is the scent of wet leaves after the rain. Instead all the smells have a frozen quality to them, sort of a crystal clear texture. The days are shorter, nights are longer, but life goes on and in a flipped kind of a way it feels like you get more done in an evening, because evenings are longer too.

Winter in Toronto is cold. It is so cold, that people start talking about it in late summer. “Ah, you are staying here for a year? Wait until winter comes! You know how cold it gets? -40 Celcius…. with the wind chill factor!” This “wind chill factor” is a real thing, and it is one of three factors that makes winter unpleasant, the other two are the inconvenience of snow blocking your doors, driveways, windscreens and even roads, and the other is dangerous driving conditions. However, none talks about the dangerous driving conditions, snow gets mention only in hyperbolic terms of “we had the largest amount of snow last winter”, but the “wind chill factor” comes up in every winter conversation. “Do you know how cold it gets? Up to -40 Celsius! With the wind chill factor” I suppose it is equivalent to our Australian “in the shade” summer temperatures: “it will be +30 Celsius tomorrow…. In the shade!” Few people spend their days in the shade. Indoors, outdoors, but not in the shade, and when a car heats up at a parking lot, “in the shade” temperature can be multiplied times two or three inside that car. We don’t seem to make a big deal about it though – must be the Australian “Yeah mate, cool mate, no worries mate”.

If café patios are the summer thing to do, then going to Caribbean, Cuba or at least Florida is the winter thing to do in Canada. Despite the winter being so cold, it really only comes into its own in December, which means that time for travelling is either just before Christmas, during Christmas or new year break or at the end of season in January/ February. This is a short peak season interval and filling it in with a week on a warm beach is as challenging as finding a free table on a patio at a café in summer.

As cold as winters are, the indoors are heavily heated. I started off spending a few minutes packing myself into the warm layers of clothing to face the cold street. Within a minute of stepping from a cold street into a shop, I would be either sweating or fainting from overheating. The shop attendants wear T-shirts. Even fast unbuttoning of the coat was only a temporary relief. So now off it comes, the coat that is.

Learnt a new word today: sleet! It is frozen raindrops that bounce on impact with the ground. You see, you get out and onto the street, and it seem like it is snowing because these frozen things dont fall but float like snow, but on settling in they are like little icicles that melt on your coat, so you get wet like if it was raining. So you stand there for a short while thinking whether to open an umbrella.... Found myself doing this more than once: looking at whether anyone else is using an umbrella before opening mine. So much for my non-conformist character! Cannot even call it peer pressure. Is it my fear of looking ridiculous? But no, I found a positive spin on this confronting behaviour of mine. I called it an “adaptive response”! When in Toronto, do as Torontonians do! Still, I am glad that they don’t walk around in shorts and thongs in this weather. In my defence, I have seen a lot of young men walking with unbuttoned jackets and coats, and I did not give in! It was bloody cold, and I was not about to sacrifice my warmth for the cool looks. And I gave in to my comfort in favour of my vanity: I am wearing Ecco boots, whose Gore-Tex keeps me dry and warm, despite ruining my sharp cuff-links image with their clumsy practical looks that makes me feel very non-elegant. So I must be not that vain and not that impressionable after all. Just adaptable… I think…

Spring is yet to come…..