The winter freeze-thaw cycle wreaks utter havoc with infrastructure. In Ottawa, where whole weeks go by with the thermometer barely struggling above -20C, the thaw that always follows a cold snap leaves the city covered with muddy slush that promptly freezes again in lumps all over the place — horrible for pedestrians. It would take me longer to walk the third of a mile from my front door in Lower Town to the nearest groomed arterial street than the rest of the mile to my job at National Defence Headquarters. I always used a hiking stick to keep myself upright.

Many Canadian communities are full of axle-breaking potholes because the asphalt pavement breaks down every winter. Residential streets that carry only local domestic traffic tend to be neglected so the trucks can keep rolling on the main drags, which is why stretches of my street here in Stratford look like transplants from Haiti or Afghanistan.

No wonder we pay sky-high property taxes.