> > It's that time of year again. Those beautiful autumn snowflakes are about two inches deep all over the diveway. My family uses a plastic shovel to pick them up and carry them to the snowdrift beside the driveway. It takes hundreds of trips to get them over there. We must have hauled about a hundred shovelfuls today. It never ends. In the 18 years I've lived here, the earliest the snow left for good was about March, but there are years when it lasts all the way until June. Those times, it sucks. The snow makes great snowmen, except when it gets all powdery (if it's too cold). But whenever we make one, it always gets really warm for about a day to melt the snowman down and then it snows again. One year I even tried to make a snow fort, but it melted before I got it waist high. Winter came suddenly this year, it was plus ten one day and minus fifteen the next (Celsius). Fortunately, we'd already finished raking the leaves and aerating the soil and stuff. Personally, though, I guess I'm not ready for winter. It's too darn cold!
> > -Space "Yay for Edmonton!" Bar

Ah, so it's snowed already in your corner of the Great White North. By standard reckoning, is that early or late in the season for the white stuff. And are you sure God didn't just grind up and dump 152,000 pounds of crushed, powdered Rockies on you to double as snow... like in the Grinch movie? :-)

Anyway, Edmonton is *cool*. Yep, any place that allegedly requires electrical plug outlets in the parking lots, to keep your engine from freezing solid, has got to be one of the coldest... uh, *coolest* places in the world. I've never been there, but my Dave has; and one of my bosses is also an Edmontonian. In fact, most of the year I practically work for Syncrude Canada (and for Suncor Energy Alberta, a bit further north.)

All I can say is, there's about 50 Quebecers here in my end of the country who know something about the oil industry, but none of us are in a position to influence Major Federal Policy in your favour (i.e. policies previously made by Eastern blockhead politicos). Shoot. Terribly sorry bout that. ;^)


> Canadians are a hearty people. Not only do they survive those killer winters, they have to do it without a Florida. They could go to our Florida, but it would mean driving for days and days. On top of that, their dollars become 70 cents as soon as they cross the border. The obvious solution is to build a Florida peninsula for them and attach it to southern Manitoba, right between North Dakota and Minnesota. It would be a whole new province complete with a tropical climate, powdered-sugar beaches and palm trees. They could easily pay for it with tourist dollars from Dee-troit. It could be called Florada or Canida. I'll let Canada work out the other details.
> Howard

Didn't you know, Howard? Florida already *is* the 13th Province of Canada; it's been revered since time immemorial as "Quebec South". All those Quebec seniors and retirees known as 'Snowbirds' fly down en masse to Florida in December, and they don't come back until Spring. Hey, we've even had a few absentee members of the Canadian Senate do that for nine months out of the year, too. Heh.

Wolfspirit