For the past few months, I’ve been teaching international MBA students who are new to Canada. They are incredibly bright, hard working professionals, very polite and respectful. It has been quite interesting meeting and learning from them.
When I ask about their impressions of life in Canada, it always comes back to one topic – it’s cold here. It’s not unusual, even in May, to have someone in class with a heavy coat on. It’s a lot warmer in Columbia or Sri Lanka, not quite used to Vancouver yet, I guess.
In early March, I was telling them the nice weather will be here soon. The blossoms will come out, the city in full bloom, it will be gorgeous, just wait! Didn’t happen.
In April, I told them the nice weather is just around the corner, the sun will come out and it will start warming up. Didn’t happen.
Now that May is ending, and we haven’t seen many days of sunshine and warmth yet, they think, at best, I’m lying. At worst, they think I’m a little crazy.
As I look across the street at my neighbour’s cherry tree, the blossoms are still out. In June. Where are we, Calgary? This is a lost spring.
One day a switch will flip and it will heat up quickly, and our fair skin that has been covered up for so long will need layers of SPF 70 sunscreen to protect us.
It reminds me of Expo ’86. The fair opened at the beginning of May, and essentially got rained out. At the beginning of July, the sun came out and we didn’t see a cloud for months. Maybe that’s what we can expect this year.
It seems we always get a certain amount of a season, it all depends on when it starts. If we get snow in November, the blossoms are out in February. If summer doesn’t arrive until July, we have nice weather until the end of October.
I don’t know where the Farmer’s get insight for their Almanac, but I wouldn’t be asking for suggestions on lottery numbers any time soon.
In the meantime, when it comes to my students, I just have to come to grips with a true, west-coast reality.
In Vancouver, we don’t tan, we rust.
Welcome to the Vancouver Rain Festival – Sept. 1 to Aug. 31.
All this rain is good for the plants. At least we don’t have to shovel it.
Brad Sherwin, MBA is a long-time resident of South Delta, and has over 30 years’ experience in marketing, public relations and business strategy. He teaches post-secondary marketing, coaches hockey goalies and is Past President of Deltassist.
