I'm sorry Nova Scotia, you snow if you want to snow

The last couple weeks of miserable outdoor conditions culminated while I was stuck in traffic on the way home today. With a full bladder and zero patience I thought "If Nova Scotia was a person, I'd love to punch them in the face".

Having arrived safely home, bladder drained and patience restored, I owe Nova Scotia a big apology.

Yes, it is snowing.

Again.

Yes, the roads are abysmal and the sidewalks are worse.

Yes, getting from A to B requires the combined skills of an ice-road trucker and an alpine climber/goat.

And most definitely yes, I am tired of going only where I have to, not everywhere I want to.

But, and I feel like an asshole for pointing this out, it's not like it's not expected. It's winter in Canada. The great white north.

I live in a tiny east-coast province almost entirely surrounded by the Atlantic ocean. It's shitty outside because it's that time of year for it to be shitty outside.

This year has just been extra extra shitty.

This started me thinking about Nova Scotia. If it's hard now, can you imagine what it was like 100 years ago? 200 years ago? 400 years ago? Colonial Nova Scotia is that old.

In that 400 years, we haven't been kind to Nova Scotia. We levelled its old hardwood forests to build ships. We levelled the rest of its forests, repeatedly, for lumber and pulp. We obliterated its fish stocks. We ripped open its insides to mine coal and steel and despite poisoned land, poisoned water, and graveyards of dead miners, we didn't stop until well after no one wanted to buy it anymore.

We were one of the four provinces of Confederation, we were building Canada.

As no good deed goes unpunished, large portions of our country now view us as the poor relation on the east coast with hands out and work hats hung up. Less recently, we were described as having a "defeatist culture" by our prime minister. More recently we were blasted by the federal minister of employment for our failure to frack the hell out of what's left of our postage-sized province, because jobs.

That no oil giants were beating down our door for the opportunity before the moratorium and before the ban wasn't mention. That oil prices are as stable and reliable as peace in the middle east also wasn't mention. And that we pay some of the highest taxes in Canada for the privilege of living here certainly wasn't mentioned.

So I'm sorry Nova Scotia for being nasty earlier. If you want to snow, you go ahead and snow. Your people will persevere, as we always have. If we're being fair, you should probably snow until sometime into the next decade.

But you won't, you glorious province. Regardless of what we've done to you, spring will come and the rain will wash away the snow. Your lakes and rivers will flow freely and your lush vegetation will wrap everything in green.

And when that happens, every single one of your people will thank their lucky stars to live in this tiny east-coast province almost entirely surrounded by the Atlantic ocean.