“Perceptions,” by Gerry Warner

Op-Ed Commentary

If you’re alive and reasonably well today (Jan. 13), congratulate yourself because you survived the coldest night in Cranbrook in many a year.

How many years? That’s difficult to say because over the years Cranbrook’s “official thermometer,” so to speak, has moved around a bit because it was in the hands of volunteers who would record the temperature on a regular basis and send the information to a government department in Victoria. That went on until the late 1960s when the job was consolidated at the Cranbrook Airport and performed by airport staff.

If you go by that system, Cranbrook’s official historical low (at the airport) occurred New Year’s Eve 1968 when the mercury – and they probably did use a mercury thermometer back then – dropped to 40 below C, the point where the Centigrade and Fahrenheit measuring systems magically mix. No matter what system you use, that’s bone-chilling cold and I’m just grateful that I wasn’t living in the Key City at that time.

But hold on. There’s more to this story yet.

I once had a list – now lost –  of volunteer weather extremes in the region and it listed more than a few times that the Cranbrook temperature dropped below minus 40 C/F.

January 1950 was a wickedly cold month when the temperature dropped into the proverbial minus 40 range several times all over B.C. It was so cold, most rivers, including the Kootenay and the Fraser, froze solid and it killed the ivy on the walls of the historic B.C. Legislature buildings.

Municipal water systems froze all over the province and in Castlegar I can remember a bucket of snow sitting on the warming tray of our kitchen wood stove because the village’s water system was one big block of ice. I would have been five at the time so that was quite likely the frigid winter of 1950. I can’t remember for sure.

But I’m quite willing to bet that if you talked to some of the old-timers around they’d verify there was a time in Cranbrook when winter temperatures dropped into the minus 30/40 range on a regular basis and people just lived with it.

Back in November 1956, I can remember skating on an outdoor Castlegar rink flooded by the village in late November. This winter was so mild that the city wasn’t able to flood the Baker Park outdoor rink until now and Cranbrook’s winters are a lot colder than Castlegar’s. How things have changed!

Yes, it’s damn cold out there. But keep in mind the mild winter we’ve enjoyed until now. We even missed having a white Christmas; finally the snow came this week.  And the weather forecast is calling for above freezing temperatures by the end of next week. Not a solid month of Arctic conditions like Cranbrookians endured in 1950. This brings up some crucially important points that many of us may be forgetting.

We, like most Canadian towns, have homeless people sleeping “rough” outside on a regular basis including during the winter. This is a tragedy no matter how you cut it. By the grace of God, one can only pray that no one in Cranbrook, Kimberley or elsewhere freezes to death in this cold snap.

Unfortunately, some may not make it, and of that, we should all be ashamed.

I know that the churches, the Salvation Army and many other government, social and private agencies are pitching in to try to prevent loss of life but somehow that doesn’t seem quite enough. How can something like this be happening in 2024?

I bet few, if any, people died in B.C.’s Siberian cold wave in the 1950s. Then again in those days people slept with a roof over their heads. In that halcyon era people didn’t need to resort to tents or snuggling up to warm building vents to escape the deep freeze like cats and dogs do.

Surely we’re better than that? Then again, you have to wonder. The world is currently besieged by two major wars, a grim situation that hasn’t been seen since the early1950s. Another war has sprung up in the Red Sea. China and the US continue to menace each other over Taiwan and North Korea regularly menaces almost everyone.

And in the rich Western world, people are close to freezing to death in the streets, some literally because they choose not to come in from the cold.

I don’t have a crystal ball, but even if I did, I’d be reluctant to look into it. If these are “end times,” I don’t want to know it. At least not yet.

– Gerry Warner is a retired journalist, who appreciates his warm winter bed more than ever.

Article Share