Boy, Was I Nieve

Simon Grimard

It all happened in January of 2007.Iwas living alone at my family cottage just an hour north of Quebec city for the next several months;Iwas Living the dream. Iwas taking two online courses, skiing six hours a day, and painting the walls as payment to my parents. As an 18 year oldIcould not ask for much more than whatIcurrently had.

The first couple of weeks at the cottage were spent getting organized and into a routine. IFigured out how and whenIneeded to be logged online for my school work. Ispoke to my mother as we discussed colour schemes and the layout of which walls she wanted painted. And most importantly,Igot my my season pass for skiing. The only problem thatIcould see with my current situation was that so far, this particular winter had been decimated by warm weather and a severe lack of snow.

The trend of warm weather and no snow seemed like it was going to stay all winter, untilIwoke up on the 19^th of January and looked outside my bedroom window. Apparently all the weather forecasters in Quebec had missed seeing a cold front coming down from northern Canada and colliding with the extremely wet and warm front that had been sitting over the region for the past few weeks. This mixture caused one of two responses from the people of Quebec. The first and what appeared to be the more popular opinion was utter disappointment that winter had finally hit Quebec for another season and that the roads were now practically impassable for anyone who did not own a 4x4 vehicle. The other response, the one thatIhad, was a sigh of relief, and a feeling of joy thatIhadn’t felt in what seemed like a very long time.

The Quebec Transportation Authority declared that the highway leading up to ski hill and my cottage would be closed for a minimum of six to eight hours. The plough truck drivers had been caught off guard by the storm and dispatch was having difficulty getting enough drivers into work to keep the city streets clean, let alone the surrounding outskirts. Itook the news of the highways being closed a little differently than those calling into the radio station; Iwas ecstatic. The highway being closed meant one thing to me, nobody from the city was going to be able to make it to the ski hill for the entire day. However,Ionly lived a ten minute drive away from the resort and in my 18 year old mindIbelieved that my; 1996 front wheel drive Saab could make it through anything.

The trip to the ski hill started off well. After shovelling my car out from what was now two feet of fresh snow fall, my car started up right away and after a few minutes of letting it warm up,Iwas on my way to go skiing. Iquickly realized the mistakeImade in deciding to drive in the snow storm whenIpassed Jacque's house, the neighbourhood handy man and plough truck driver. Irealized that he hadn't even been able to clear out his own driveway, or anybody elses for that matter. About twenty minutes into the drive, and only having gone 15 kilometres, things went horribly wrong. The road and its edge blended into one;Ihad no idea where the car was in relation to the road. SoonIrealized thatIhad gone left whereIshould have gone right andIwas in the ditch. Now on a normal day this would not of been a problem,Iwould just simply call for a tow truck and wait. However with the amount of snow falling, there was a disruption in cell service. This left me with only one option, get our of my car and walk back to Jacque's to see if he could pull me out.

So my ordeal began, firstlyIhad to dig my way out of my own car. Then it was off on my journey through the blinding snow. After an hour and a half of treading through the snow,Ifinally saw his house. Jacque was out with his daughters playing the snow when they turned to see, what must of seemed to them a half dead snow covered human form struggling to make it up their driveway. After explaining to them what had happened Jacque, quickly brought me inside to warm up and scold me. Then after what seemed like an eternity but in actuality only lasted 45 minutes. This scolding also a phone call to my parents, he agreed to take his snowmobile over to my car to see if he could do anything. We had trouble finding the car since the snow fall had not slowed. He then took one look at the puzzle, took out a long yellow stick that he placed in the snow, he then told me we would return tomorrow to dig it out after the snow had stopped.

The following afternoon we arrived not only to find another two and a half feet of snow on my car, but also a nice snow drift caused by a plough that had driven by. Jacque handed me a shovel and said he would be back in and hour with the backhoe to pull the car out. WhenIasked why he couldn't just get the backhoe to dig out my car he simply turned to me and said “it's my backhoe and its your car that's stuck. Start digging.” An hour later, Jacque came back and and towed me back to his place where we got my car running with little difficulty. After this whole ordealIwas still able to go skiing that evening.