I grew up living all over BC and then my job had me all over Canada, Victoria in winter is a joke. People see one snowflake and they think they're going to die.
This is a few years old but kinda sums up winter in Victoria.
>- 5:35 p.m. Environment Canada predicts two to five centimetres of snow will fall on Victoria within a 24-hour period. Ed Bain reads the forecast on-air, turns white and faints.
> - 5:40 p.m. Victoria Mayor Alan Lowe issues immediate appeal for federal assistance. Prime Minister Paul Martin promises to send in the army.
>- 8:45 p.m. Victorians begin queuing at tire stores, leaving vehicles in line overnight to be first served in morning.
>- 10:15 p.m. It turns out B.C.'s last army base, CFB Chilliwack, closed in 1998. Martin promises to send in navy instead.
>- 10:20 p.m. Navy announces deployment to San Diego and Hawaii for "security reasons." Conservative Leader Stephen Harper suggests prime minister call Quebec advertising agencies to shovel the snow, "since that's where the Liberals are spending all our money anyway."
>- 6:22 a.m. Temperature plunges. Word spreads that Saanich man found ice on windshield. Curious neighbours gather to watch him scrape it off with credit card. One motorist, a former Albertan, claims use of mysterious "defrost" switch on dashboard can aid in process.
> - 8:15 a.m. Terrified downtown skateboarders lose toques to menacing mob of balding, middle-aged men. "We tried to run," they say, "but we couldn't in those stupid baggy-assed pants!"
>- 9:30 a.m. Hardware stores sell both of their snow shovels. Islanders begin cobbling together implements made from kayak paddles, umbrellas, plywood, cookie sheets and boogie boards.
>- 10 a.m. Golfers switch to orange balls. Beacon Hill Park cricket players, anxious not to repeat the ugly "snowblower incident" of the Blizzard of '96, switch to orange uniforms.
>- Noon. Word of impending West Coast snowfall tops newscasts Canada. Saskatoon hospitals report epidemic of sprained wrists related to viewers high-fiving one another.
>- 1:20 p.m. Elementary schools call in grief counsellors. Grief counsellors refuse to go, citing lack of snow tires.
>- 2:30 p.m. Rush hour begins an hour early as office workers come down with mysterious illness and bolt for home. Usual traffic snarl is compounded by large number of four-wheel-drives abandoned by side of road.
>- 2:50 p.m. Airplanes are grounded and ferries docked. No way to travel between Island and rest of the world. Times Colonist headline: "Mainland Cut Off From Civilization."
>- 3:22 p.m. Prime Minister Martin announces Canada's DART rapid-response team can be on the ground within six months." We can't leave Victoria to deal with 225 centimetres of snow on its own," he tells Lowe. "Um, that's two-to-five centimetres, not two-two-five," replies the mayor. The prime minister hangs up.
