Urban winter through a huge window

Legare Street, in winter
Montreal, QC
January 2019
This photo originally shared on Instagram

I don't like to talk about the weather. Everyone else seems to, though. They complain about how cold it is, about how tragic their lives have become because Mother Nature dared blow frost over the region.

While I don't deny the hardship - frozen pipes suck, as does a car that won't start, or a walkway that needs constant shovelling - I do take issue with our singular focus on it. And our singular belief that life sucks because of it.

It doesn't. Not for us, anyway. I'm pretty sure the homeless person who usually sets up camp under the bridge a 5-minute walk from work thinks our snowed-in house would be a lovely alternative to the options he faces tonight: Either freeze to death, or head to a shelter, or a church basement. I'm also sure the patient in ICU with an uncertain prognosis might give anything to pick up a shovel and hit the driveway. There's always someone with a harder story, and we dishonor them by pretending our woes are, in fact, woes.

Not wanting to talk about the weather, however, doesn't mean I don't want to somehow tell the story of it. Of what a moment in a wintry place might feel like. I'm not complaining: Just trying to record the experience so that others may be able to see it through my lens.

Which brings me to this shot of the Jewish General Hospital's Pavilion K. I took it from the inside looking out, through the gigantic atrium window overlooking Legare Street. It was a cold, sad day, one of many in a series, and the grey skies and frigid temperatures conspired to make this apocalyptic scene come alive.

Come alive. You can still do just that when the weather bottoms out. When life throws you curves. When you find yourself standing alone looking for a sign that life does, indeed, have merit.

Maybe I'm going to like talking about the weather, after all.

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