From the Archives

A View of Quebec in Winter

Reproduction by: William F. Wilson

To order:  www.artchive.com

Today in Calgary, AB it is -23C with a windchill of -36C.  This brought to mind a passage in Mrs. Frances Brooke's book, The History of Emily Montague, written in the 1760's:

"Dec 29

I will never take a beaver's word again as long as I live:  there is no supporting this cold; the Canadians say it is seventeen years since there has been so severe a season.  I thought beavers had been people of more honor.
Adieu!  I can no more: the ink freezes as I take it from the standish to the paper, though close to a large stove.  Don't expect me to write again till May; one's faculties are absolutely congealed this weather.

Jan 1

It is with difficulty I breathe, my dear; the cold is so amazingly intense as almost totally to stop respiration.  I have business, the business of pleasure, at Quebec; but have not courage to stir from the stove.

We have had five days, the severity of which none of the natives remember to have ever seen equaled: 'tis said, the cold is beyond all the thermometers here, tho' intended for the climate.

The strongest wine freezes in a room which has a stove in it; even brandy is thickened to the consistence of oil: the largest wood fire, in a wide chimney, does not throw out its heat a quarter of a yard.
........
I no longer wonder the elegant arts are unknown here; the rigour of the climate suspends the very powers of the understanding; what then must become of those of the imagination?  ...Genius will never mount high, where the faculties of the mind are benumbed half the year.

'Tis sufficient employment for the msot lively spirit here to contrive how to preserve an existence, of which there are moments that one is hardly conscious: the cold really sometimes brings on a sort of stupefaction."

She recommends taking brandy on a regular basis to keep one "...coquet and agreeable" during the cold weather.  Bottoms up!