Canada - Living in the true north.

By Andre Kilian

Meintjeskop Courier, Volume1/1994

Text translated from the original Afrikaans

One Monday morning Koba Kenny arrived at the office with a big smile on her face. The reason she explained was that it was getting warmer. By Wednesday it should be -22 C and by Thursday -17 C. Something to look forward to!

It is not something to smile about, but cry. Except perhaps if one thinks that before the weekend the temperature was -38 C, which was experienced as - 56 C because of the wind chill. Radio and TV warned that “exposed skin will freeze in less than two minutes”.

The Kilian family awoke on Sunday morning with a burst water heater on the second floor. The water filtered down to the ground floor where it turned the mat in the sun room(!) into an ice rink, the cushions on the sofa into ice blocks and the ceiling into a cave with stalactites. A winter wonderland.

On Saturday, like the German aunties in the south of that country, Koba threw one of her loose mats onto the snow to clear it of ant impurities. An hour later she had to summon help and they had to carry that mat into the house on its side like a sheet of glass.

Liebeth Turbati’s husband who as an Italian was indignant that we could recommend that he acquire a gas-operated hairdryer for himself. Not for the hair, but to unfreeze the locks on the motor car. Otherwise one could not get the key in to open the car.

In the meantime the Italian was also obliged to accept as normal wearing his wife’s pantyhose under his long underpants!

And this led Chris Botha to tell about the problems his landlady had with burst water pipes, water leaks and garage doors frozen closed. Like all financially independent Canadians, the lady spent the Canadian winters on the islands. 

When on a short visit to Ottawa she needed her car she had to call a factotum to break open the garage door. And voila, inside the garage her car was stuck in a block of ice 8 inches x 14 foot x 18 foot with stalactites from roof to roof.

Canada has much in common with South Africa. But not the climate!

Best wishes to those of you in Ottawa. This tales makes the heat in Pretoria more bearable! The editor.