A SoCal Yanquee In The Queen’s Commonwealth
Are You Mad?

Hi, my name’s Chuck, and apparently, according to conventional wisdom on both sides of the US–Canadian border, I’m stark raving bonkers.

Ordinarily I am a year-round resident of Palm Springs, California, best known for its desert oasis-like setting of swaying palm trees, plethora of world class golf courses, resorts, and warm balmy winters, all of which make this modest arid corner of paradise one of the west’s liveliest destinations for snowbirds from both the northern tier of states as well as nearly every Canadian province.

So why do so many people from both sides of the boarder consider me, well loco en la cabeza? I am spending the better part of the winter of 2015-2016 in Canada. Owen Sound, Ontario to be more precise.

Why?

Short answer, because being forcibly, semiretired, I can.

More to the point I am now doing something I’ve wanted to do since college; writing—full time—whether I can make a living at it or not, which is my not so subtle way of encouraging you to share and like these stories and to visit our sponsors.




Writers are always being encouraged to write about what they know. The problem is aside from sixty-some-odd years of trivial nonsense, I don’t know much of anything about anything. I do know that since moving to Palm Springs I’ve met more Canadians in a year than I had in all my previous years roaming about the continent we share.

While planning to launch this blog it occurred to me that as a typical (sort of) American, I really didn’t know much beyond the obvious stereotypes aboot our hockey-loving cousins to the north, eh? In as much as the Canadians I had met, prior to coming to Ontario, rarely fit the US mold, much less acted like Bob and Doug McKenzie, I thought to myself, “Why not get to know more about Canada, Canadians, and that seasonal migration known as snowbirding, eh?”

I began discussing this idea over cocktails with several of my friends in Palm Springs.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” was the nearly universal response. Mind you, these conversations began last August when it’s not at all uncommon for daytime temperatures to climb into the 43C/110F + range and stay well above 29C/85F overnight.

Nevertheless I pressed on.

The question soon became, “where in Canada will you stay?”

Like their US counterparts most Coachella Valley Canadian snowbirds come from the high plains and provinces west of the Rockies, although, for reasons I’ll get into in a future post, I have noticed an increasing winter migration from the east, Ontario in particular.

Vancouver was everyone’s first guess as to where I might winter. I know people there and while the climate isn’t as warm as Palm Springs during the Great White North’s cruelest season, the weather in coastal British Columbia can be a helluva lot less snowy and frigid than conditions experienced in the interior provinces.

“Too much like a soggy San Francisco,” I thought to myself, and besides, after years of living in Los Angeles and writing about the entertainment industry, I’d spent more than my fair share of time listening to film and TV people complain about runaway production, often as they were packing their bags for yet another trip to Hollywood North.

Between Vancouver and parts of Southern Ontario, aside from a few Palm Springs snowbirds, I don’t know a soul from the plains provinces and after reviewing the average weather specs for Winnipeg, or Winterpeg as Canuk’s refer to it, I decided there were limits to how far I would be willing to go for my art.

Ontario, where I have friends in several different cities, became the obvious choice as the place to begin my odyssey and research this narrative. And I also, somewhere along the way, may have taken a personal interest in a particular Ontarian.

But that’s… another story.