We're back in the deep freeze again. The relief of several days' temperature hovering just above freezing was, alas, merely temporary, though we could be forgiven for imagining that the moderation in temperature was a hesitant spring's knocking on the door of tenuous opportunity, close to where any reasonable weather element might imagine it was time for winter's excesses to relent.

No such luck.

Back to night-time lows in the minus-20 Centigrade range. Day-time highs now are extremely icy, all the more so given prevailing wind conditions. On the good news front, the sun is also frequently evident in between episodes of light snowfall. So beauty is there in abundance, and continued opportunities to venture out for daily ravine walks.

We hate to put boots on little Riley; while they keep his feet warm, they're impediments to his gait, and he often falls flat on his face, if there's a snow accumulation. About halfway through our hour-and-a-half circuit (that we managed in half that time a decade ago) he picks up speed and galumphs along with us. But on these cold days if we gamble that he'll be able to withstand the cold, my husband ends up carrying him half the way, warming his feet, then putting him back on the trail until he freezes up again.

Yesterday I was no little amused to see the beautiful little whippet that we occasionally come across, wearing a winter coat, and nosing about authoritatively in all the cache spots close to ground level where we usually deposit peanuts. And, for the first time, the svelte cosmopolitan fellow approached me, nuzzling my gloved hand with its peanuts, delicately extracting one, to gobble it down.

His companion, a truly sweet  young man, informed us that the whippet is familiar with all the cache spots, and that in their walks, inspects each one to take advantage of the takings if the squirrels haven't been quick enough to claim them, at those times when our walks intersect.

He isn't, of course, the only dog we come across in the ravine who loves peanuts. Some of them recognize us and devotedly follow our progress, hoping to cadge peanuts from us. Fun for them and for us, as well.

For petty small-mindedness it's hard to beat the Parti Quebecois, and in particular the nasty resentment displayed by the premier of the province, Pauline Marois, whose name could be transliterated as Pauline Malice.

When Canadians saw and celebrated the Olympic Sochi Winter Games wins by Canadians, they were ecstatic, overjoyed for the hard-won victories on the part of the Canadian competitors, and happy for Canada, making its mark in outdoor winter sport activities.

Many Canadians were also no doubt highly impressed at the number of Canadians from Quebec who distinguished themselves so brilliantly by their meticulous performances, and winning accolades resulting in medal presentations. Hearing the Canadian anthem played in such a foreign, exotic setting where the best of the best are recognized and awarded recognition, is a real patriotic boost.

But many people might also have felt a bit of a niggling warning that the sheer numbers of Quebec athletes so distinguishing themselves would give ammunition to those Quebecois who have committed themselves to separation from Canada under the belief that they constitute in and of themselves a 'nation', unto themselves deserving of being a country, alongside but yet apart from all the others that comprise Confederated Canada.

And, sure enough. It started hilariously enough with the doctored photograph of two beautiful young French-Canadian sisters, proudly wearing Canadian Olympic clothing having the symbolic Maple Leaf and colour red exchanged for the Quebec fleur-de-lys and blue. Proudly tweeted by a PQ minister as a Quebec win, for the province, not the country.

The Olympic medal-winning Dufour-Lapointe sisters were originally photographed wearing Canada mittens, but an industrious Photoshopper changed the maple leafs to the Fleur-de-lis. (Twitter) 

No matter that the correct and very real photograph was available to show up the absurdity of that nationalistic chicanery, it just added fuel to the fire of the Parti Quebecois championing of its own, separate and apart from the entire Canadian delegation.

Here's the original photo of the Dufour-Lapointe sisters: 

Chloé and Justine Dufour-Lapointe donned the Bay's Red Mittens as part of the company's campaign to raise money to send Canadian athletes to the Olympics. (Canadian Olympic Committee)

And then, the lowest blow of all, when Quebec Premier Pauline Marois gushed enthusiastically over the gold achieved by "the men's Olympic hockey team", studiously avoiding having to mouth the PQ-intolerable ... 'the Canadian men's Olympic hockey team'. Team Canada obviously is comprised solely of skilled athletes from the province of Quebec; any others within the team from elsewhere in Canada were simply incidental to the performance of the entire team, not worth mentioning. 

REUTERS/Christinne Muschi

Certainly not in the context of performing on behalf of Canada.

Some fifteen years ago or more when the old ravine acquaintances were still around with their dogs, people became aware that there was a stray dog roaming about the ravine. The dog's barking was often heard and people would view it fleetingly, as it sped away from human contact, finding shelter where people did not normally go, away from the trails.

But the dog would be seen daily, and it was the subject of much concern. People wanted to be able to approach it, to see if it wore tags identifying where it came from, but no one was able to come close enough, before the spooked dog would flee. It seemed interested in other dogs, and was friendly enough to them, but seemed to be suspicious of humans.

Eventually, someone came across a fair-sized enclosure, a type of pen often used by people to control their animals' penchant for wandering off, I guess, and within it was a 'bed' comprised of old blankets. It was obviously where the dog's owners had placed and left the dog, in an out-of-the-way area of the ravine. And it seemed just as obvious that the dog would return there for comfort as night fell, to sleep away the dark hours so that when dawn broke he would begin roaming the ravine once again.

Since the dog seemed to make no effort to find his way back to wherever his home might have been, it could be concluded that he had been driven quite a far distance from home. Alternately, that 'home' did not represent a haven and tender care, and the dog was resigned to living on its own. Fears arose that the dog would starve, and people began leaving out food for it to take, and eventually someone began to leave food at the very place where the pen with its bed was.

A resolutely determined pair in their 50s, who had a dog of their own named Sam set out to calm the dog's fears and earn its trust. Placing food out regularly where the dog slept, and having the dog on occasion see them do this eventually led to the dog's cautious trust. The two were able to convince the dog he could approach them. And that's when the dog's lonely vigil stopped and it became a cherished pet.

Both of those dogs died some years back. Occasionally we would see the man of the pair walking the ravine. He told us though his wife wanted them to adopt another dog, he wouldn't have it. His heart had broken when the two dogs had died, one following on the other, and he was not prepared to revisit that pain.

We saw them both yesterday, in the ravine. It was a windy, sunny and very cold day. Each of them was holding a very large white plastic bag, and stooping to scoop up dog waste left behind on the trails by owners who saw no need to clean up after their dogs. They're casual about this, their dedication to committing to such a public good, shrugging their shoulders and saying they were accustomed to doing it while they had their dogs, so this was just a continuation of sorts.

When he's in his workshop downstairs my husband uses his mini-laptop computer to tune in to the U.S. National Public Radio out of Boston, interested in their varied programming. At dinner last night, he told me about a program that he'd listened to, and which obviously moved him, for he sounded fairly disturbed, talking to me about what he'd listened in at.

The program focused on a kind of self-help group dedicated to giving encouragement and sympathy to people past middle-age who had been married for quite a considerable length of time and one or the other of the pair had declared their intention to leave the marriage. He had been moved by listening to the still-fresh wounds in the voices of women in particular who had evidently no idea that their spouse was no longer interested in maintaining their marriage. Who described the decision to leave as coming out of the blue, wounding them beyond their capacity to sustain themselves.

These were marriages that had lasted on average thirty-five years, when one partner had arrived at the decision that they could no longer be part of the marriage covenant, declaring their firm intention to separate, become single again. And not necessarily to find another, compatible partner. Just stating that they "can't take it any longer", for whatever the idiosyncratic reason.

Whereas I have a tendency to mentally shrug 'too bad', my husband seems to find such things beyond sad, and personally moving. I kid him that likely the women were fed up by having their speech interrupted by the husband's overbearing need to have his say. But he finds it no joking matter.

Just coincidentally I happened to be reading an article in the newspaper by a professor of psychology at Northwest University who had conducted a considerable amount of research on marital relations and more particularly the penchant for people to separate, leading to an overall statistic of 46% failures in marriage ending in divorce.

Interestingly and logically enough, there's a kind of consensus that has been reached by those involved in such research, that marriages stand and fall on the amount of time two committed people in a marriage spend with one another. That's the glue that binds, apart from having interests in common. "The average marriage today is weaker than the average marriage of yore, in terms of both satisfaction and divorce rate, but the best marriages today are much stronger, in terms of both satisfaction and personal well-being, than the best marriages of yore", according to Eli J. Finkel's conclusions.

The University of Missouri researcher Christine M. Proulx analyzed 14 longitudinal studies between 1979 and 2002 concerning martial quality and personal well-being. What came out of that analysis was the conviction that marital quality predicts better personal well-being that becomes stronger over time; the identified benefits or lack of, of good and mediocre marriages have widened over time.

A pair of articles published in the journal Psychological Inquiry saw the development of a new theory of marriage success, evidently. The major thesis of which is that people now have elevated expectations of marriage which can be achieved resulting in unprecedentedly high levels of marital quality - possible if those involved are capable of and willing to devote a good portion of time and energy within their marriage. Without that investment, marriages fall short of expectations, and fail.

No kidding. I think of myself as the limpet ferociously attached to the rock of my existence, my husband of 59 years of marriage. And counting.

The smorgasbord of assorted seeds and nuts is what continues to attract our neighbourhood wildlife to our home. It is only the black-capped chickadees that flitter around the bird feeder. And red squirrels and slate-black juncos that gather under it, to take possession of whatever drops from above.

But the main attraction is the broad top rail on the porch where my husband scatters all those seeds and nuts in abundance. That is where, every morning when we come downstairs and glance out the front door, we can see the mono-and sometimes mixed-gathering of birds and beasties that come to feast for their morning repast.

It can be a gathering of three black, one red, another grey squirrel, or a combination of a black, one wary red squirrel and close by them, though keeping a respectful distance, chickadees gathering what they may. Only the occasional visit of a crow clears everyone else out.

Throughout the day there is a regular stream of visitors and each acts somewhat differently, even within the species groups. We know, because we watch them intensely often, fascinated by their presence, grateful that we have the opportunity both to witness their being and to be able to help them survive the food scarcity of winter.

Now that the raccoons are returning nightly to our compost bins we're also a bit concerned to ensure that we place within them from time to time edible treats that we might otherwise have held onto, depositing them instead into the bins for the following night-ritual of retrieval by the hungry little animals.

We're seeing now more red squirrels, more cardinals, in the sense that the female of what is most certainly a mated pair coming around, she seeming more alert to potential danger than the male, though that may change too as it did with the male as he gained confidence in the relative safety of his presence on our porch and the security of an assured food depot.

When dusk falls the female cardinal is most likely to appear, and this also when the rabbit comes along to hunker down on the floor of the porch and nibble on the fallen seeds and nuts. A never-ending progression of visitors keeps us entertained and appreciative of what we share with the nature that surrounds us.

Despite Friday's early morning freezing rain followed by an all-day event of plain, cold rain, we discovered on Saturday that the snowpack in the ravine hadn't been much reduced, and the creek, while no longer ice-bound and now running free, wasn't that swollen with runoff. Presumably, much of it had taken place throughout the night on Friday.

Because Saturday turned out beautifully weather-benign, with the sun brightening the atmosphere and the temperature hovering at the freezing mark, there were quite a few people out rambling through the ravine trails, including those we are familiar with and those we saw yesterday for the first time. Most people who tend to frequent the ravine are there because they have companion dogs requiring exercise, benefiting both dogs and people.

As always occurs in that surrounding when people come across one another, particularly in the presence of our canine friends, introductions of a casual but warm type are frequent. And though we may not see again those new to our acquaintance, it does in a manner, broaden one's casual circle of acquaintances since most people are given to relaxing under such circumstances, some going so far as to practically reciting their life history in a capsule of extended conversation.

One man we came across halfway through our daily excursion was walking a rather shambolic looking dog. This was a cross between a Labrador, German Shepherd and Husky, a dog with a shaggy coat and the most beautiful face imaginable, with a gentle mien that would break your heart. Her companion was a corpulent man likely in his early 60s, with a pronounced limp, moving along with the assistance of a cane.

We, so accustomed to being in the ravine, knowing its contours and the difficulties surmounting them with advancing age, thought he would be like many others we see on occasion venturing into the natural confines of our neighbourhood, taking care to use only those trails that remain on high ground, not venturing beyond to those that dip and rise, following the lay of the land which is, after all, an extensive natural forested ravine.

We were more than moderately surprised to see him gaining on us after some twenty minutes had passed; he had been walking in a direction opposite to ours, but at some point had diverted onto a trail where our paths crossed again, when he was walking in the same direction as us. And though he certainly had a decided limp and required the use of that cane, he was no slouch in his advance.

Moreover, as we approached the area where the trail diverted, forking off in opposite directions, each of which required a long uphill clamber, he never hesitated but embarked on conquering the challenge of the ascent and seemingly with little trouble.

He had wanted to stand and chat, and we obliged, spending a considerable pause listening to him speak about the Winter Olympics in Sochi, and we obligingly discussing with him our shared perceptions about the event. Proud Canadians all. We chatted about many of the events and our amazement at the athletic prowess, the endurance, the amazing ability of the human body to perform manoeuvres that appear quite impossible as feats of agility resulting in exquisitely realized actions that took one's breath away.

We discussed the matter of all four judges in the final men's hockey event for the following day featuring Canada and Sweden, being Canadian, and how odd that seemed under the circumstances, when absolute neutrality is a requirement. Particularly in view of the claims that Russia and the U.S. had conspired to deny Canada a gold medal in the pairs short-dance skating performance; under that cloud of suspicion Sweden had every reason to feel uncomfortable about the outcome, despite assurances even from the Swedish hockey players that they had complete confidence in the judges since they knew them as NHL trusted referees.

SOCHI, RUSSIA - FEBRUARY 23: Chris Kunitz #14 of Canada celebrates with teammates Drew Doughty #8, Marc-Edouard Vlasic #44 and Sidney Crosby #87 after scoring a third-period goal against Henrik Lundqvist #30 of Sweden during the Men's Ice Hockey Gold Medal match on Day 16 of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics at Bolshoy Ice Dome on February 23, 2014 in Sochi, Russia. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

As for perceptions about the less able-bodied, our brief acquaintance with this man surely represented a demonstration that not all is as it is assumed to be.

Overnight Thursday, we were warned by the weather office, would bring us hours of freezing rain. On top of all the accumulated snow of the winter months and the exceedingly frigid temperatures that had made this winter an unusually cold and snowy experience in perseverance and a whole lot of shovelling, we were warned that Friday would see the freezing rain turned to ordinary rain as the temperature lofted up to a balmy two degrees Celsius.

Because of the freezing rain warning, all school buses in the area were cancelled. And throughout the day the rain just kept pelting down, aided by the wind to make for some pretty slushy and messy roads. The municipality had sent out front-end loaders to ensure that storm drains were cleared of their covering of ice and snow to be enabled to welcome and absorb the enormous run-off.

We felt badly for the birds and small animals. Whereas under normal circumstances we're hardly aware of how they manage to survive under inclement weather conditions, the fact that we now have feeding stations right at the front door, on the porch, and we stop at the glassed front door often during the day to witness the birds and animals visiting, has brought their condition directly to our attention.

The cardinal looked nothing like the glorious crimson feathered creatures we've been accustomed to seeing, instead what we saw at the feeding station was a bedraggled, utterly soaked bird. Red and black squirrels took shelter under the overhang my husband had installed to protect the seeds and nuts from becoming entirely engulfed, that temporary relief enabling them to secure all the food that was replenished and remained available to them.

The night before we had watched as the rabbit hunkered down on the porch to make good of the scattered seeds and peanuts. And this morning, after the rain had left the snowpack much reduced we noted that the tops of our composters had been set neatly aside, signalling to us that the area raccoons which had been hibernating over the previous several months had been awakened by the warmth and penetrating rain, to avail themselves of any foraging treasure of stale bread crusts, fruit and vegetable peelings and whatever else they might find to appeal to their palates.