Perspirational Stories

As long as I’ve lived in Montreal, which, including winter return visits totals around 30 years, I’ve recognised that this is a city that knows its winters. It’s comfortable, even happy with its winters. People gripe about the weather, but in the end, even on a day with a temperature of -25C (-13F) and a windchill of -35C (-31F) they go about their business.

I have few gripes about the winter here. I like the clear delineation between seasons (well, perhaps not so clear any more) and a day such as the above, if rare, doesn’t bother me.

But (and you knew there was going to be a but! I always try to preface a good rant with a seemingly rational, measured couple of paragraphs! It makes me seem rational and measured!) what the fuck is up with the heating of every indoor space when everyone is dressed in North Face Nuptse goose down (rated to forty below zero!)?

You come in from a howling minus-twenty gale, actually comfy in your rabbit-fur hat and vast, down-lined coat, face covered with your kashmere scarf and hands toasty in your Patagonia gloves, stomping around in your heavy Sorel boots, and you get on a heated bus. Or step into any Metro station. Or walk into Eaton Center.

Within seconds, you’re perspiring profusely, desperately regretting your zeal in winterwear. But guess what? Before you know it, just when the sweat is actually dripping down your back and into your long underwear, you’re getting off the bus! Or emerging from the Metro! Or stepping into the howling gale between the concrete canyons of de Maisonneuve!

Okay, the shopping centers I can understand. There are hundreds of employees who need to work all day. We don’t want to be putting them in coats. But a bus? The bus needs to be heated so the bus driver can stay warm? The Metro? Those slovenly pigs in the booth need to be warm?

I hate going out some days. The colder ones are the worst, but not because I dread the cold, but because I dread the heat.

Yesterday, when the wind was blowing at a fairly brisk clip, rendering the ambient temp at around -5 C (23F), I was so hot at my neighbourhood Metro grocery store that I took off my coat then and there and walked the five or so minutes home with only my T-shirt on my upper torso. I got a bunch of weird looks, but let me tell you, it felt good!

Every time I get on a bus in winter I head for the nearest window and slam it open as far as it will go. Let the goddamn bus driver freeze. This is Montreal, not Palm Springs.