Cold In Canada

Canada is cold, or at least it's supposed to be. But, I gathered from talking to fellow students that I had met that it seems Canada has gotten warmer over the years. One Canadian students who have lived in Canada his whole life told me at a halloween party that it used to snow already during halloween. In contrast, the weather on that particular day was in the low 20s and high teens. The Indonesian students that I have befriended told me that last year was a particularly warm winter in which it didn't even snow throughout December.

Indeed it would've been really sad had that occurrence repeated itself during my stay since I only got to stay until December and thus I wouldn't be able to see any snow. Fortunately, that was not the case at all. I remember vividly how when I was about to go to London (see full story here) in late November how it just started to ever so slightly snow in Toronto. It snowed really lightly when I walked from the subway station at Union to its bus station. But I think that was the first time that it snowed in Toronto. Meanwhile, Mississauga I believe only had snowfall once up to that point (and it was at night so I didn't get to experience that), even though the temperature has reached just a whiff below 0.

I was even more surprised when I arrived in London with snow all around. It was an oversight of my part because I did not check the weather forecast for London at all. I actually thought it was going to be warmer or at least have the same temperature because it was to the south of Toronto. I remember walking a kilometer from the bus stop to the hackathon's venue feeling frigid because my clothes were not suited for that level of coldness. I didn't even have any gloves. I slowly lost senses of my hand and I felt how it became stiffer and stiffer as time went on.

The temperature of Toronto (and perhaps more accurately, Mississauga) would continue to fall up until my departure to Indonesia. The lowest temperature that I had experienced was -16 degrees .

But despite all of this coldness, I honestly couldn't be bothered that much to dress in accordance to the weather. For example, I never once worn a scarf during my stay. Never, not once. I just sorta accept that my neck is gonna be cold and embrace it, or I rely on my jacket or coat to shield it with their hood or tall collar. Another example is my repeated encounter with a fellow exchange student from Chile that I had met during IEC (International Education Centre) event that gathered all of UTM exchange students. Once in a while I would just encounter her in campus and we would just talk for a bit. Every time I encounter her, she's always perplexed by my choice of clothing that is always the opposite of hers. At one point in November, she was wearing a coat on top of a puffer on top of another shirt, the first two which are zipped up. Meanwhile, I was just wearing a polo shirt and a puffer that isn't even zipped up. Worse of all, I was wearing crocs (though I had worn them with socks, for better or for worse).

At times this general attitude cost me significant amount of comfort. I remember when I went to Montreal it was minus 10 degrees at night and I was wearing crocs at the time (I don't think I even had any socks). Because of that and the fact that at one point I tried to use hot water to warm up my toes, I think my toes actually froze up as in there were ice in my crocs in my general toes area. I also forgot to bring gloves to that trip to Montreal. All of that somewhat reduced my enjoyment of the trip. It became even worse when I went back from that trip to Toronto and discovered that the temperature was -16 degrees. You could imagine my agony walking down from the St. George subway station to the shuttle bus pick-up point to Mississauga.

But I do feel a sense of pride of being able to adapt very well to the temperature there. One of the reason that I was able to not wear as much clothing as I should have is because my body just gradually became used to the temperature somehow someway.