Little wonder that Canadians are so preoccupied with the weather that comments and concerns about the prevailing weather conditions tend to feature large in dominating any conversations, and are avidly read in media reports of impending weather fronts.

Canada is a geography of extremes in weather conditions, changing seemingly from one to the other with less than a moment's delay between them. Weather confronts us in this northern geography. It is too dry, too wet, too cold, too hot, too windy, too damp and all the nuances of each singly and in combination to intrigue and bedevil us whether we are located in northern, central, western or eastern Canada.

From our prairies to our ocean coasts, our Arctic to our Great Lakes, our mountains and our forests, Canadians live with the vagaries of Mother Nature's weather systems sent to enhance and to complicate our lives. We learn, lest we perish in the attempt, to drive in extreme weather conditions that winter brings us with its sleet, freezing rain, snowstorms, winter winds and iced-over terrain.

We enjoy an abundance of natural privileges in this Great White North of ours, but we also learn, lest we ignore it to our peril, to respect nature, to pay attention to her innumerable whimsical seasonal episodes contrasting and competing, compelling our attention.

This winter is turning out to be exceptionally challenging. The cold mass that has migrated from the
Arctic and whose polar chill has beset the country, coast to coast, with problems associated with coping with the unusual prolonged cold spell comprises both a threat and an opportunity to practise those Canadian skills of endurance.

High winter winds bringing down trees and power lines leave thousands without electrical power. Water pipes, though buried ostensibly deep enough to withstand the ordinary Canadian winter's frost levels, this year are proving a disconcerting problem with these low freezing temperatures of -20C to -30C. Road conditions during weather systems not given to safety, another concern. The homeless in their need, while spurning in many instances municipal and church shelters open for winter nighttime safety, muster all their resources to survive, and some will not.

Those among us who have the good fortune -- and that is most Canadians -- to live in warm, dry homes, concentrate on keeping warm and dry, allowing thoughts and inclinations to go the way of alternates to outdoor living for the time being ... spending their time at their work places, and in the evenings playing board games, busy time on the Internet, eating comfort food and placating their sense of enforced isolation with the comforts of modern-day existence.

Thinking of what could occur; a loss of electricity for one thing, forcing us to go into the overdrive of coping, is shoved aside for the gratitude enveloping us as we wait out this implacably miserable Arctic cold that appears to relish its temporary abode among us.