You've got to to 'way back in history to April 1868 to find an assassination that took the life of a Canadian politician when Thomas D'Arcy McGee, a 'father' of Canadian Confederation met his death. Canada doesn't have a dreadful tradition, like our next-door partner on the continent, of political assassinations.

But violence within nations and directed toward governments appears to be far more common now, although that could be partially the result of mass communications ease and the way that data travels. Both that we're more aware of those unfortunate episodes of psychotic political ideology leading to public murders, and that having them so frequently in the news inspires the disaffected and the violence-prone to take that avenue themselves.

With that knowledge, it makes common good sense, even in a generally peaceful country like Canada, to ensure that our government executives, the lawmakers that we elect to lead the political life of the country, and most particularly the chief executive, the Prime Minister of Canada, is well protected. That a security cordon discreetly stands in place to prevent the savage occurrence of an attempted assassination.

 A protester rushes the stage as Prime Minister Stephen Harper speaks at the Vancouver, Board of Trade in downtown Vancouver, Monday, Jan. 6, 2014. Vancouver police say they won't be pursuing criminal charges against two climate-change protesters who came within touching distance of Prime Minister Stephen Harper on a stage at an event in Vancouver.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward


So, there is our prime minister, sitting on stage at an engagement on Monday to address the Vancouver Chamber of Commerce, to speak about the future of Canada, of the critical issues of natural resource extraction and of protection of the environment; subjects that raise huge emotional protests in the minds of many who view oil extraction, refinement, transport and export to foreign trade destinations as evils to be avoided at all costs, confronted at very close range by protesters.

Protests are well and good; people have a right to express their opinion on weighty subjects that appeal to their sense of social justice and which commit them to activist causes. Their voices should be heard, and their protests should result in discussions and reasonable actions meant to defray concerns. The Prime Minister, in his talk to the Vancouver Board of Trade, addressed the very issues that the two protesters on stage alongside the Prime Minister, were concerned about.

They were not, however, meant to share the physical stage with the Prime Minister. Lax security, inexcusably made that possible, however. And although these two particular committed citizen-environmentalists were harmless in the sense that they meant no harm to come to the personage at whom their message was directed (as well as to the public at large), it could just as easily have been otherwise; that psychopathic opponents to the current government's political stance on the international scene might have chosen to do him, and Canada, irreversible harm.

There was one occasion, and it must have been over 35 years ago when I willingly drank liquor and enjoyed it as well. We had been driving to Washington, D.C., and stopped over for the night at a small town in West Virginia that was undergoing reconstruction as a tourist site, focusing on its heritage value, in an attempt to restore the downtown core. We were in a very attractive restaurant, seated at a table beside a large window overlooking a stone-walled garden.

My husband had gone over to use the telephone and I looked over at the drink he had ordered, a Margarita. I was very thirsty, it was early spring and when we'd left Ottawa it was extremely cool, becoming progressively warmer the further south we drove. I lifted the drink and tentatively smelled it, tasted it, and in short order, downed it all before my husband's return to the table.

I don't like alcohol. At gatherings when others were comfortable holding a drink, I never was at ease. I don't like tobacco. As a child I detested the tobacco odour that always lingered on my father. I thought his tobacco-stained fingers were dreadful looking, and I hated the smell of tobacco that infiltrated the house. His smoking habit led him to an early death but that's another matter altogether.

Tobacco was his only vice. There was never any alcohol in our home. I seemed to instinctively view alcoholic drinks with disfavour, recoiled from the smell of beer, and wanted nothing, ever, to do with drink. My husband is an inveterate wine drinker; he enjoys a glass of wine at many evening meals. I think it's rather civilized, myself, although I prefer never to partake of it myself. As a child I was introduced to the use of wine during Passover Seders that took place at my uncle's house.

There's a kind of social snobbery in viewing the alcoholic "choice of the people" as askance as I do, I know. When I become aware that someone of my acquaintance is given to beer drinking, my estimation of their intelligence and their system of values instantly plummets. That's my problem, certainly not theirs. I do, eventually, overlook it. But the prejudice is there, alive and well.

And when I read, in yesterday's paper, about the new-reigning oldest woman in Canada, born in 1900 and just recently celebrated her 113 birthday the very same month that my own 77th birthday came around, it was interesting. But the photograph that accompanied the story evoked great revulsion in me. "Really classy" was my reaction.

(Photograph: Lyle Stafford, Times Colonist) Merle Barwis enjoys a beer on her 111th birthday in 2011

It presents as an unfailingly delightful spectacle. The entire landscape softly enveloped in a deep layer of snow, the trees outlined and each branch laden with fluffy newfallen snow. I judge that we're walking a full foot higher on the trails in the ravine now, using my familiarity with the normal height of tree markers that normally appear a full foot higher than they now do. Layer upon layer of snowfall has produced the usual winter landscape fully adorned with glistening white; just a little earlier this year than most.

The snow has been constant. In the last few days lighter snowfalls have occurred, lazily floating down on the landscape from the laden clouds. We've been given a respite from the bone-chilling icy atmosphere that has suffused the atmosphere for far too long, quite unusual in its tenacity and ferocity. The high actually reached minus-four-degrees Celsius by yesterday afternoon when we set out for an hour's romp in the woods.

We weren't exactly romping, and nor was Riley, though he hadn't needed boots at that temperature; his tiny paws are able to withstand that cold, but it's just on the cusp of when he does need boots to protect him from icing up. We came across far more people rambling through the ravine than we usually see, even on a Sunday. And with them were dogs we'd never before seen, and those we have become familiar with, as well. It was those dogs, all of them large, Labrador, hounds and Retriever breeds for the most part, that were happily romping through the snow, alert to the presence of other woodland creatures presenting as a chase-challenge.

All the trees were humped over with their burden of snow; tree trunks resembling ghostly figures. The landscape, under a dull grey sky was a monochromatic view of black-and-white, scenic and extremely still. As many people and dogs as we did come across, there were vast stretches where it was just us and the stillness of the woods.

There was wind, and it busied itself creating veils of snow resembling ectoplasmic creations of an otherwordly sort when it managed as it often did, to dislodge the buildup of soft snow on tree boughs that became an evanescent soft white veil as it fell to the ground.

Canadians are seen to be phlegmatic, unflappable, stoic about the weather that Mother Nature throws so casually at us. She's casual about it, and so are we, generally. We know what to expect; both the anticipated and the unexpected. After all, we live in a geographically Northern climate. When winter arrives, as it does without fail, it heralds its presence by exposing us year after year to sleet, blizzards, freezing rain, ice fog, snow events and beautiful scenery.

Winter this year arrived in November, and it did so with a vengeance. Of course it hasn't been only Canada that has been gifted with Nature's grumbling ill humour. The Middle East for example, received a snowfall bonus that turned into miserable flooding. On the one hand, children rejoiced, on the other their parents struggled to contain the damage that ensued, with the exception of low-water reservoirs being topped up. And Syrian refugees' misery was compounded.

November to December, the outgoing months of 2013, were replete with icy temperatures and plenty of snowfalls, altering the landscape at an earlier than usual time. Sliding into 2014, more of the same with crippling ice storms bringing down power and leaving hundreds of thousands of people across Canada and the United States with the misery of coping sans heat, electricity and water at a time of year usually given over to good humour and celebration.

Here in the Ottawa Valley and beyond, burst municipal watermains led to boil-water advisories. Atop the mountains of snow we've gathered about us, more in increments that all together make for a considerable snow load on the landscape. This evening, we're warned, freezing rain will once again make its entry following a somewhat lethargic snowfall. But for at least one day the temperature has moderated, allowing us to venture out for an hour's ramble in our wooded and very snowy ravine today, with a high of minus-4-degrees Celsius.

Problems erupt with carbon monoxide warnings from municipal and provincial authorities, on the backs of people attempting to provide some life-affirming warmth into their ice-box-transformed homes using heaters not meant for indoor use, and people die. There have been fires this winter like any other, that have left people destitute, without their belongings, and the comfort of home; a more desolating experience hard to find in an already-difficult winter season.

Unlike Syria, however, there are no armed militias shooting at anyone. And, unlike Syria, there are charitable organizations geared to provide a little bit of human warmth to those in need, with no problem getting it to the people who so badly need it. The homeless, a blight on society's values and capabilities, are being fed and housed if and when they will accept it.

And we fortunate ones simply keep shovelling, and stay off the highways when it can be avoided, not wishing to become a statistic.

The extended cold-snap we have been exposed to this extraordinarily cold winter seems in no hurry to depart. It lingers here, like a tormenting imp, happy to bring misery to people. Outreach workers have been busy out on the streets at night, looking for the vulnerable homeless sheltering themselves from the icy fingers of a ferocious winter cold that has the potential to silently seep life out of the unsheltered. They bring with them sustenance of food and drink and caring and implore those they succeed in finding to seek protective haven for the night in one of the many shelters which, although crowded will always find place for another body.

The municipality has begun snow removal from city streets due to the safety factor being surmounted by high snowpiles lining streets making the roadway narrower, more difficult for vehicles to pass, and adding to the potential for accidents by impeding sightlines of motorists attempting to exit from driveways into traffic lanes. Where we live, a succession of heavy dump trucks await their turn to be filled with the icy snow lumps dredged from snow-piled curbs by front-loaders, further obstructing traffic, the drivers seemingly impervious to the cold and icy wind blasts, leaving their winter jackets in the cabs of their trucks, despite being lashed by the wind when they exit for brief periods from the protective haven of their trucks.

We haven't ventured out to the ravine for the past several days. Our last trek there left us gasping in the cold, despite being well enough prepared for the environment; my relatively slow progress in the snow on the trails isn't enough to generate sufficient heat from energy expenditure to keep us warm enough,  unlike years previous when we would lope swiftly through the hilly terrain, keeping warm in the process. On the last walk it took quite awhile for the pain of the extreme cold to subside from my fingers on our return. Now we wait for the temperature to moderate at least somewhat before striking out again. Night-time lows are averaging minus-26-degrees and day-time highs about minus-17. With the wind it seems significantly colder.

We've been diligent about putting out peanuts at the front and side of the house. I'm feeling guilty about our lapse of presence in the ravine since it also means that our daily deposits of peanuts have been placed in abeyance. At our house, there are squirrel-paw marks all over the newfallen snow that comes down in small increments daily, and now there are also the prints of birdclaws, since a cardinal has also been availing itself of the peanuts we leave on the rail of the porch.

"In the end the issue was decided by the wind. As the men rested, Wheeler gnawing on a frozen fig, drinking the last of his water, Mallory focused on the mountain soaring above them. He strained his eyes to find a single impediment on the great shoulder that rose from the col to the Northeast Ridge. "We looked up at the flat edge ascending at no very steep angle", he later wrote to Sir Francis Younghusband, the old explorer who'd first sparked the British dream of Everest, "easy rocks and snow all the way to the north-east crest. All we had seen before to build hopes on was confirmed now by the nearer view. No obstacle appeared, none so formidable that a competent party would not easily surmount or go around it."
Transfixed by the mountain, Mallory appeared to Wheeler oblivious to the fierce gusts that still swept over them, despite the modest protection of the wall. Ice formed in his hair and frosted his eyelashes. His eyes seemed as if settled in another realm. In truth, Mallory was tempted to go on, even alone. But as he studied the slope, his hopes sank. "It was impossible", he reported to Younghusband, "to look long without a shudder. From top to bottom this ridge was exposed to the full fury of a gale from the northwest." Violent blasts of wind-whipped snow shot across every slope. "The powdery fresh snow on the great face of Everest was being swept along in unbroken spindrift", he wrote, "and the very ridge where our route lay was marked out to receive its unmitigated fury. We could see the blown snow deflected upwards for a moment where the wind met the ridge, only to rush violently down in a frightful blizzard on the leeward side."
Their lines of communication back to base were also tenuous in the extreme, reaching from this desperate position on the col at 23,000 feet back down across the East Rongbuk Glacier and then over the 22,200-foot Lhakpa La to the camps of the Kharta Valley. The men were too weak for heroics. What good could come from achieving another 2,000 feet, even were it possible? A height record for Hinks and the Everest Committee, imperial glory for Younghusband and the British press; nothing could motivate Mallory less. It was folly to continue. Still he hesitated, and gathered Wheeler and Bullock to his side. By all accounts not a word passed between them. Then Mallory decided to challenge the wind. Leaving the porters, the three British sahibs went on, stumbling more than walking, making their way up the col to the upper ledge "to put the matter to a test". They continued for perhaps two hundred yards and "for a few moments exposed ourselves on the col to the full blast, and then straggled back to shelter. Nothing more was said about pushing our assault any further." No man, Mallory ventured, could have survived such exposure for more than an hour. "No one", Wheeler wrote very simply, "could have existed on that ridge."
Wade Davis -- Into the Silence

Quite the adventure that was, not one we're eager to repeat, but given the unusual circumstances, unavoidable. We all went up to bed earlier than usual last night, hoping to catch at least part of a good night's sleep before having to get up and started on a day of goodbyes. Someone set the alarm wrong, at pm instead of am, so it wasn't until 4:15 that I squinted at the clock on my bedside table, and sleepily asked my husband what time we were really supposed to be getting up.

By then our son was already in the shower, preparing himself for what would turn out to be a rather long day; just as well I heard a sound to wake me up at that juncture. It's amazing how quickly two old codgers like us can move when it comes to being prepared on time. We simply dressed, took little Riley out to the backyard for a minute of relief, packed up the car and left by 4:30 am.

Traffic was not much in evidence in the dark early morning hours of a cruelly icy day. A slight wind, with temperatures at minus-26-degrees Celsius. At the airport it was a different story; the curb in front of the departures desks was packed with vehicles stopped, emitting passengers anxious not to miss their early flight. We heard that 22 states in the U.S. were affected by a blizzard of a storm dumping snow and curtailing air traffic to a standstill. Not so here, though Canada's east coast was also being hit by a snowstorm of significant proportions.

We kissed and we hugged and we waved and we hoped for a good flight from Ottawa to Calgary and from Calgary on to Yellowknife. And then drove back home in the dark, but for those areas blazing alight still with colourful Christmas lights.

A few hours later, while I was baking, and cleaning up the house a bit, my husband -- speaking to our daughter-in-law who with our son had just arrived back in Toronto last night as Halifax was being hit by weather they had escaped in Toronto to arrive there -- softly called me over to the front door. We've been putting peanuts out in this intense cold both at the front and at the side doors. There are tiny squirrel pawprints everywhere.

But on this occasion, there was a bright and beautiful carmine male cardinal, cracking a peanut and enjoying the nuts within.

He spends a good deal of his time here completing a paper he is preparing to deliver at a conference in Yellowknife, where he'll be headed after leaving us, post-visit with us over the holidays. We'd gone over to visit with his sister and niece a few days earlier; our daughter and granddaughter, and enjoyed ourselves being together, a rare opportunity since our children are dispersed across the country.

Yesterday we'd gone out to the ravine for a very cold ramble. We dressed in protective layers against the cold and the wind, but at minus-17 degrees Celsius and a sharp wind, it was cold indeed. No one else appeared to be out on the last day of 2013, but us. Until we came across Lily, a pure-white German Shepherd we've known for years, out for a brief walk with her human companion, a man as unusual as she is, but for height, not colouration.

I would have felt more comfortable if I hadn't kept pulling off my warm, insulated mitten to grapple with peanuts in my double-gloved right hand, depositing them as usual for the squirrels and the crows which were also following our progress on this bitterly cold day. When we eventually returned home it took quite awhile for the fingers on that hand to feel normal again.

But it was a beautiful day regardless, overcast but radiant with a thick coverlet of snow.

For the second time in a week our son prepared dinner, a vegetable curry with black beans, and it was excellent. He had also prepared an appetizer; chopped onion stirred-fried in olive oil, then crumbled goat cheese added to it, and baby spinach leaves. The result was spectacularly fragrant and delicious.

We watched a film last night, a Norwegian film about a train engineer who had just retired from his position with the railway, and it was quite the film. Witty and stoic, the reminiscences of mostly elderly people and the way they manage their lives in a northern environment. A quietly touching film, titled O'Horten, starring the actor Bard Owe.

And then we rounded out the evening to midnight with a hilarious game of Pictionary -- I just happen to be the odd-person-out in this family incapable of sketching really good pictographs.