There's another one on the way, we're to batten down the hatches. The brittle cold has given way to milder temperatures, at last. With that, an oncoming storm. We've been warned to expect freezing rain, snow pellets and snow, lots of it. Following hard on last week's snow storm this will mean we're finally catching up to the levels of the usual winter snowpack for the Ottawa Valley.

Canadians never fail for a topic of conversation among themselves. The state of the weather is forever a convenient subject to elicit agreement, and sometimes rage at the elements we know we can do nothing about. As Canadians we're torn between pride that as a people of the northern hemisphere, we have learned to cope with winter weather extremes, from days-long ice storms, to highway-dangerous winter fogs, to towering mantles of snow over our landscape and miserable wind to accompany the bone-chilling cold.

That's when the hardy among us take to the ski hills, or cross-country ski, or snowshoe over frozen lakes and streams and through our forest byways, or any number of other winter-recreational activities to appreciate the wonder of the white beauty surrounding us. Alternating that celebration of winter with huddling for warmth around a fireplace, cooking up comfort foods, and complaining about what we cannot alter.

Some Canadians make their own alterations, by posing as the fabled snow geese seen in winter along the St.Lawrence, making their presence in Ontario and Quebec in huge numbers, presenting as a spectacular phenomenon of nature.

They aren't exactly transformed by their yearning for warmer climes into an aviary species, but they do fly aboard silver-hued air vessels to places of eternal sunshine; Florida, Mexico, Costa Rica, and there wait out the short days of winter that make for long months of waiting....