It has been cold in Saskatchewan lately. Around our town, people are remarking on the cold and the snow after months of having had neither. Every remark, however, ends with “but” – “but at least it’s not freezing rain”, “but at least we’re not in eastern Ontario.”
That area, ravaged by a terrible ice storm, has, at time of writing, seen the power off in some locations for a week. At one point, more than three million people – three times the total population of Saskatchewan – were without power. I have been trying to imagine what it would be like for every single person in Saskatchewan to be without heat and light at the same time, and I cannot.
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Once, years ago, I was out for an evening when the power all over our area went out. It was an eerie feeling driving home in the dark without one yardlight for company and for comfort.
Imagining the whole province in darkness is beyond me.
Surfing the Internet on the weekend, I came upon a chat line dealing with the storm.
There were 82 entries under the heading storm stories; another 27 messages under the heading Hey Quebec, What About Separation Now, and another 24 under the heading Scruples.
I opened this one out of curiosity and found the question asked, if you had heat and power would you open your house to a bunch of strangers who had none?
Some people said they would only open their homes to people they knew, or knew about, but the majority by far said yes, they would open their houses to strangers as they would hope that strangers would open their houses in the same circumstances.
“Do unto others” one person wrote simply. At least two of the people who wrote in saying they would definitely open their homes to strangers were from Saskatchewan. Citing the winter storms which often blow up quickly, they said that this is the Saskatchewan way.
They could have said Prairie way.
I can’t help but notice in all this a bit of smugness on the part of some Prairie dwellers.
Out here, where the pavement ends, we like to think that we are closer to nature, that we understand her better than our urban cousins who have grown away from what some call the “natural life.”
It is Mother Nature who has all the power in the east right now.
We are as vulnerable; we are not weather-proof.
