We're thankful not to be among those tens of thousands, now reduced from hundreds of thousands, who have no power in their homes. The series of snowfalls we experienced, followed by ice pellets and freezing rain left us with an abundance of snow, with a light icy crust topping it all, but it was the areas of the province south of us that were left with the full brunt of an ice storm that broke massive tree limbs and felled power lines leaving at one point a third of a million people without power. That extended into Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

Our older son and daughter-in-law escaped Toronto after the worst of the storm left the city in shambles. They had lost power too, but it was restored in the wee hours of the night, and they left for the airport not long afterward. While their flight was delayed several times it did proceed after all, though their luggage was mislaid for a three-hour period before they were reunited with it.

Our daughter and grandchild who live rurally are often without power for days at a time, meaning they cannot get well water since it's a system operated by an electric pump, nor heat, if violent winds or freezing rain outweigh the capacity of power lines to resist failure. This time they have also been spared the misery of a dark cold winter creeping into their home.

When we ventured into the ravine it was with great difficulty, having to clamber over the snowbanks of icy chunks of snow shoved at the side of the road when municipal road clearing takes place. Once over the snowbanks the short trudge to the trailhead is difficult when we're breaking the trail, and even when a few others have been there preceding us.

Beside the numbing cold penetrating its icy fingers into our winter garments and slapping our faces with its sting, the need to lumber forward on snow-piled trails is difficult; not so much so perhaps when we were younger, but certainly now it is, in spades. We had set out fairly late in the afternoon and since it was an overcast day, light was already encumbered with falling dusk on these, the slightest daylight times of the year.

We came across a little Akita we occasionally see being walked by an older man who loves seeing his dog cavorting in the snow; indeed our winter weather comes as close to the little dog's native Hokkaido as anywhere else on Earth, one might imagine. She was wearing a bright flickering little lamp on her collar, not so much to light her way as to alert her walker to her presence wherever she might happen to get herself off to, as light began to fail.