As Northern Manitobans, whether we were born here or arrived from other parts of Canada or anywhere throughout the world, we like to think that we can handle whatever winter throws our way, chuckling when we see news stories about how people in other regions who are less accustomed to dealing with winter have a hard time with what we might consider mild temperatures and piddling amounts of snow.
However, it’s usually whenever people start to feel like they have a handle on something, be it their job or life in general or, in Thompson’s case last week, the weather, that something comes along to help them put things back into perspective. And when Mother Nature decides to do it, it usually becomes clear pretty quickly who’s the boss.
“We don’t have snow days in Thompson” has long been a local mantra, much to the chagrin of children who have to bundle up in winter gear and trudge off to school in temperatures that seem to other Canadians more suited to the surface of Mars. Well, this year at least, we did, and the School District of Mystery Lake deserves credit for assessing the situation and concluding, reasonably, that it wasn’t in anyone’s best interest to send kids and cars out on to the street when the roads were unplowed and the sidewalks were buried under drifts of snow, not to mention the fact that there was no electricity at some of the schools and snow not yet cleared away from fire exits posed a safety hazard in the case of an emergency.
Manitoba Hydro also deserves credit for having employees who braved weather most of the rest of us were content to watch from inside and to restore power to 1,500 customers without it in Thompson, mostly within a few hours.
Within a day or two of the big dump of snow hitting the city on Wednesday, roads and parking lots were being cleared, schools were back open, the power was back on and even the garbage and recycling bins were being picked up on schedule, provided you could drag them down your driveway in the snow. Northern Manitoba took a licking and kept on ticking. Still, this winter storm, which took place before the cold weather has arrived, should be a reminder about the importance of having safety supplies like candles, flashlights, batteries, food and water in your home and to know where they are so that when you wake up one morning in the dark, going without power remains just a temporary inconvenience rather than an unbearable situation or even an emergency.
