As someone who grew up never seeing snow until the age of 21, Canadian winters are a frightful experience and before you start, I know that Southern Alberta has the mildest winters in the province. Trust me, I know, you don’t have to bang on about it.

I don’t know whose idea of fun involves getting out of bed an hour earlier to shovel snow in -20 and then painfully scraping your car windshield in the pitch black of a winter morning. If this is your idea of fun then, either I haven’t met you yet, or in my opinion you’re suffering from some sort of clinical psychotic episode that is yet to be treated.

But what about all of the fun sports and activities you can have in the winter I hear you say?! By sports and activities do you mean strapping yourself onto those long pieces of wood and hurling yourself down a mountain and/or off the side of a cliff to your quite possibly imminent and painful death? Then yes, yes I have attempted and failed miserably at both the singular piece of long wood and the two pieces of long wood, although the latter showed much more promise. The best part of the experience is the beers after the entirely painful and awkward event.

What’s that now? The hot chocolates and coffee and baileys and hot turkey dinners are just simply the best? You do realize that you can have any of those things at literally any other time of the year, right? That’s the same as saying having a cold beer is only good in the summer, which we all know is total jibberish.

I will agree, that winter can be pretty. When the snow is fresh and it fallen and dusted the trees and ground in the delicate white powder in only a way snow can. Yes, that is pretty, until, an inevitable Chinook blows through and makes a slushy mess when mixed with the dirt, grit and sand to create some sort of poop coloured, lumpy soup covering the road and sloppily decorates vehicles and those people lucky enough to stumble in to the barrage of uncleanliness.

So, I say boo to you winter, boo to you and your frosty appearance making a mess, endangering into all with your sneaky black ice and most importantly, making me wear so many layers it takes entirely too much time to get to a comfortable body temperature when moving between inside and outside. But hey, perhaps that whole global warming thing will take care of old Jack Frost and his season after all?