There’s often nothing but farmland. And this is Ontario, supposedly oh-so-populated by Canadian standards, not Saskatchewan, the province that feeds Canada and where reportedly there’s nothing but prairie.
But once in a while, on the road between Ottawa and Cornwall, there’s a big farm, a big house… and then nothing but farmland again for kilometres.
Who lives here?
What kind of life do they live?
That’s what I wonder.
When you’re driving by at 80 km/h (my friend does stick to the speed limit), the scenery is very picturesque. Look at all the space they have! Look at these houses! Not cookie-cutter suburban houses, but actual houses, like the ones kids draw long before they learn about real estate prices and sound walls!
But think of the winter.
I think of winter a lot. It’s not buried in the fine print of the Canada file. It’s a giant header in big, bold letters.
Really, who didn’t get the memo? Who doesn’t think of winter? It comes up in conversations with a sigh around October when the temperature starts dropping and it’s only the beginning of what we all know will happen.
Now picture your life in one of these picturesque houses in the middle of a field between late November and—gasp—April.
How do they get to work, get to school, run errands? Ain’t no snowplow service out there. Okay, maybe they have their own snowplow, conveniently parked in an adjacent shed. But how do they keep warm in such big houses? How do they not feel hopelessly lonely looking at snow, snow and more snow for months and months?
I really can’t picture it. This is so not my life, yet somehow I’d love to live it just for the experience.
“I know some of these people,” my friend says. “I mean, their kids went to my school in Cornwall.”
“But how?” I ask naively, as if there were some magic local trick I wasn’t aware of, like teleportation or tame deer doing the school run.
“Oh, there’s a bus.”
Crazy. Even 25 years later, when I’m more or less used to thinking in travel times rather than distances—“a thirty-minute drive,” “an hour’s walk”—it baffles me that someone is willing to drive a bus and collect kids from houses in the middle of nowhere. Gee. Just the walk from the front door to the curb looks like an adventure in itself.
Mind you, I also find it crazy that OC Transpo (more or less) operates in winter. My first-ever job in Canada was at a call centre, a short-term contract for a Christmas promotion. I started in December. About a week later, at the end of a shift, the manager warned us.
“Blizzard and severe winter conditions tomorrow!”
“Yay!” I thought to myself. “A day off!”
“So plan accordingly,” she went on. “Late arrivals won’t be tolerated.”
“We’re expected to show up for work?” I winced.
Yeah, no shit. Otherwise nothing would ever get done in Canada.
Maybe that’s how they deal with life in these houses in the middle of nowhere. They have a plan, they know how it works and what it takes to live there. I’m wondering how they get to work, go shopping, have fun, but meanwhile, they have it all figured out. They hunker down. They don’t need to go places. The pantry is full, there’s always a cow to milk and a chicken laying eggs. For the rest, a monthly trip to “the city” is more than enough. Who needs a movie theater when there’s streaming, books and plenty of sex?
Yeah, maybe it’s not a bad place to spend winter, after all.
Everybody needs a place to spend winter.
I’m running away from it—hey, that’s a place too!
But some people don’t have a plan A or B.
The other night, I spotted the telltale flashing lights of an emergency vehicle while walking down the street. Police? Paramedics? I couldn’t tell. My first thought was, “I hope he’s not dead.”
He, as in the guy who’s been living in his car.
He wasn’t, thankfully. He was just having a very unpleasant chat with a police officer.
Tonight, I knocked on the car door, like I’d knock on a front door.
“Hi there! Don’t want to bother you, just wondering if you’re okay.”
The lights inside went out.
I waited for five seconds.
“I’m going to walk away. I’m just worried about you.”
He opened the door and came out.
It turns out he’s from Nigeria, of all places. Last winter, his utilities were cut off, and he somehow made it through without heat or power. Now he’s lost his home altogether. All he has left is his car, and nowhere else to go.
“I wonder… please tell me, because I don’t know how things work here. I just wonder if people see me.”
“Some of us do. I guess we just don’t know what to say or how to help.”
When I got home, I asked for advice. One of my neighbours suggested emailing the ward councillor—great timing, election time.
He replied a couple of hours later. He’s going to look into it with social services.
This guy just can’t spend the winter in his car.
He needs a place.
We all do.
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