Summer in Southern Canada

Earlier, I wrote about southern Canada’s Spring. Now let me describe summer: First, the sounds; roaring grass-cutters, motorbikes, muscle cars, motorboats, whining of power tools, wailing of police sirens, high-pitched shrieking of cola-fuelled kids as they drown each other in
neighbourhood pools, and the incessant twittering of one billion bugs in the backyard.

Second, the weather. In June, the cold clear air mass that’s normally above our heads battles it out with the interloping muggy air mass from Florida and we enjoy soaring temperatures, up and down — in the shape of lightning storms, torrential downpours and tornadoes, interspersed with hailstones and snow.

June slithers into July and the hot air now presses on us like a shroud. We wake sweating, commute sweating, work sweating, BBQ sweating, and sleep sweating — unless we’re lucky enough to have air-conditioning, in which case we shiver like its January.

Then it’s August — a hundred degrees ‘F’ in the shade, a hundred per cent humidity and prickly heat blistering your skin, complete with hours spent ‘lounging’ by the pool — testing and topping-up the chemicals, vacuuming the bottom, furling and unfurling the pool cover and rescuing leaves and Jurassic Park-like insects. What a glorious, lazy season.

Finally, we reach the best summer day of them all — Labour Day. The day when everything goes quiet and tropical downpours are replaced by refreshing showers from the Arctic.

I love Autumn, or Fall. A season so good they named it twice.

Summer? Bah! Humbug.