A winter storm rolls into Southwestern Ontario

A passenger gets a shot of winter driving conditions through a wet windshield.

Traffic moves slowly as vehicles navigate the snowy roads in London, Ontario. Canada may be famous for snow and winter but often Canadians living in the Southwest Region of Ontario are not well prepared for winter snow storms. Many drivers save money by not equipping their vehicles with winter tires. It's foolish but not uncommon.

Former country roads often missing sidewalks

Walking to the bank, the grocery store, the drugstore and other assorted places is not a long walk from my suburban home. The above photo was taken with a 28mm wide angle lens. The red light in the distance is clearly not all that far away. The stores are at that corner.

Yet, a lot of folk won't make the walk from my neighbourhood to the new stores that recently opened nearby. Why? Because of the lack of a sidewalk beside the major road which is the only reasonable route by foot to the new stores.

Luckily, there is an option. There is an older shopping area just a little farther away. There are sidewalks all the way to the older shopping disrict.

Not a lot of snow but certainly cold enough

I decided to walk to the bank this afternoon. Luckily I brought along a balaclava. It was -17 degrees Centigrade with the wind chill factored into the equation here in London, Ontario. I met no one else walking anywhere. The bank is rather nearby but it was still take-the-car weather.

Walking on water

One of the lights that guide vessels into the harbour can be seen in the distance.

Lake Erie is frozen. The lake is not frozen all the way accross, although this has happened when the winter is much, much colder than this year. On my visit to Port Stanley, forty-five minutes south of London, I found the ice simply hugging the shoreline.

Some years the ice creates massive, sculptural shapes thanks to the wind and the cold, but so far the results this winter are dull. Maybe the spring thaw will break the ice into large blocks to be blown into tall, jagged piles.

Living in the city

Suburban families enjoy the neighbourhood toboggan hill.

I've kept my granddaughter away from 'the hill.' It doesn't frighten her; It attracts her. I see the threat of injury; She sees the promise of fun — excitement. I'm a senior; She's a kid — a three-year-old kid.

'The hill' is a slope behind the houses immediately across from my suburban home. My granddaughter sometimes sees families leaving 'the hill' after an afternoon of sledding. She knows other kids use the long slope and doesn't understand why I won't take her there.

It frightens me. And after chatting with some of the parents, I've learned it frightens some of them, too. One common solution is to take the kids to the half-way point, or maybe a little further down, and let them slide down from there.

Most kids don't argue and I think some are quietly happy not to have to muster up the courage to slide down 'the hill' from the very top. It can be a heck of a ride.

Cold and snowy but spring is in the air

It is still quite cold in London, Ontario. The ground is still hidden under a blanket of snow. Yet, to someone who has lived his entire life in Southwestern Ontario, spring is in the air. The sun is strong and warm, it is no longer dark at six in the evening and warm days don't seem like a lucky breaks from winter cold but a sample of the warm spring days to come.

In less than a month Londoners will begin removing their snow tires and the first robins will be bathing in the bird bath which is now quite frozen.

Modern apartment tower cluster in London

After developments like the Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis failed in such a spectacular fashion, a myth grew up around vertical neighbourhoods. In the States the failed clusters became known as the projects and the most infamous have now either been demolished or soon will be: Pruitt-Igoe is demolished; Cabrini-Green in Chicago is gone; Brewster-Douglass in Detroit is slated for removal this year.

There are those who believe the death of the American projects sounded the death knell for modern architecture as it applied to housing. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In fact, despite the myth, all three of the developments mentioned were good places to live in the early years.

The developments in London are not unique. All over the world highrise neighbourhoods have succeeded. Still, I look at these buildings, so alike, huddled so tightly together, and I cannot help but think -- surely this could have been done so much better.