Winter storm just another notch in our blizzard belts

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/04/2022 (1593 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Wow, that sure was one heck of a blizzard, wasn’t it, Manitoba?

OK, technically speaking, I don’t have a clue how bad this blizzard was because, thanks to the newspaper’s tight deadlines, I am writing these words on Wednesday morning just as the snow is beginning to fall.

However, as a crusading columnist, I have just bravely taken a brief glance out my back window, and the fact there is a huge white lump where my beloved propane barbecue normally sits fills me with an impending sense of doom.

Fortunately, I am a battle-hardened Winnipegger and we are a stout-hearted, pioneering people who laugh in the face of blizzards, because we are afraid that if we start openly weeping we will soon run out of tissues and there is no way we are venturing out to the store to buy more in the middle of this Snowmaggedon or Snowpocalypse of Snowzilla or whatever stupid name the TV weather people are applying to this storm in an attempt to differentiate it from all the other storms we have endured in our lifetime.

Like almost everyone else in this province, before the blizzard hit, I took the standard precaution of visiting my local grocery store to stock up on the necessities, by which I mean chocolate-chip cookies, because if you are going to be forced to watch the Weather Channel for two straight days you need to have a stockpile of nutritious snacks.

I think I speak for all Manitobans when I say we can take whatever Mother Nature dishes out — unless, of course, she dishes out sunshine, in which case we have to slather on gobs of SPF 40 sunscreen and hide in the den because our pasty Prairie flesh burns easily.

The point — and I do have one — is that we Manitobans know a thing or two about blizzards. It is our experience with ungodly amounts of snow that give us the right to mock other Canadians when they call us long-distance to complain that a light dusting of snow is threatening their geraniums or whatever non-hardy plants they have in their gardens.

I am proud to be a hardy Manitoban. In fact, I am just like every other courageous Manitoban with one exception — I have a trophy that was presented to me for my ability to survive a blizzard that brought this city to a sudden halt.

I am not kidding; in 1997, when an April whiteout dropped 48 centimetres on Winnipeg and as much as 50 centimetres in other locations — setting the stage for the Flood of the Century — and people were forced to abandon vehicles and sleep in airports, offices and even shopping centres, I was a member of the crew of night editors responsible for putting this newspaper together.

I can recall putting together two papers that couldn’t be delivered until we stuffed them into a third paper we published two days later. I’m pretty sure I didn’t go outside to look at the snow, because I was too busy editing stories about how much (bad word) snow we’d received.

When it was all over, the paper presented us with little acrylic inuksuit emblazoned with the date of the blizzard to thank us for spelling most of the words in the blizzard editions correctly. I treasure that “trophy” to this very day, despite the fact that I currently cannot find it even though I have looked in almost every cupboard in our house.

While I have powerful memories of hiding from the Blizzard of ’97, I have even stronger memories of facing the wrath of the Blizzard of ’86, which began 36 years ago during the afternoon of Nov. 7 and within 11 hours saw the city tucked into a blanket of 35.2 centimetres of fresh powder.

It was the largest snowfall to hit the city since 1935. With winds hitting 70 km/h at times, swirling the snow to zero visibility, cars were abandoned, flights were grounded, and plows initially served only to escort emergency vehicles through the clogged roads.

I can recall finishing my day shift at the newspaper and then racing to once again ensure we were stocked up with essentials — wine, cookies, wood for the fire, and several movies on VHS tapes, which were a thing you young people can look up online.

In the wake of that blizzard, I also was presented with a special souvenir, by which I mean my son, Liam, who turns 36 just 11 days after the anniversary of the Blizzard of ’86. As a father-to-be, I was terrified my son was going to make an appearance during the height of this hellacious snowstorm.

My wife had a different point of view. While I sat staring out the window or opening a fresh bag of cookies, my heavily pregnant spouse grabbed a shovel and marched outside to attack the snowdrift at our front door.

“Honey, what are you doing?” I recall asking her as gently as humanly possible.

“I’M GOING TO SHOVEL UNTIL SOMETHING HAPPENS BECAUSE IT’S TIME FOR THIS BABY TO COME OUT!” is what she roared in reply.

Fortunately, unlike a pregnant friend who had to be escorted to hospital by a snow plow after going into labour, my wife managed to hang on for a few more days.

Speaking of my wife, she just trudged out to the garage to grab our snow shovel, which I pray isn’t a sign of history repeating itself, because I barely have enough energy being a new grandfather.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca