Life in BC

I should have known… of course!

Yesterday’s post – concerning our recent snow/not snow experience – included two short videos taken from our deck here on the Saanich peninsula. Should you have accessed the relevant page on the blog you would have been able to watch them – one after the other – to view the intended effect.

What didn’t work (humble apologies to long-term followers) was the daily email digest version of the post. If you receive your Imperceptible Immigrant news by this means you will have found yourself unable to open or play the videos. The effect varies according to the machine, mail client and browser with which you are blessed/lumbered – but I’m pretty certain that none of them will have worked.

Now – I could spend a lot of time trying to fix this, but since the clips work correctly on the site I think the simplest thing is to provide you with a link thereto, so that you can view the post as it was intended.

Here you go:

https://www.theimperceptibleimmigrant.com/2025/02/03/weather-or-not/

Sorry about that…

“And finally Winter, with its bitin’, whinin’ wind, and all the land will be mantled with snow“

Roy Bean

…or not!

When I announced – during my last year working at The School in London from which I ‘retired’ – that we were moving to Canada, the response that I most frequently encountered was along the lines of Roy Bean’s quote above. Fundamentally, the chief impression of my new homeland was that the winter’s were long and terrible – and that I had better like snow and ice – and, of course, hockey!

Now – I have written plenty since then in these pages in an attempt to dispel this impression – particularly when one is considering the west coast of Canada – and even more particularly when thinking about Victoria. The provincial capital enjoys pretty much the best climate in Canada – including some of the mildest winters. Yes – it does snow – but not a lot more than it does in the south of England.

There is – naturally – a twist. Victoria is also a good place to encounter what one might call ‘Crowded House’ weather – “Four Seasons in One Day”. Here is an example from yesterday:

I shot this little video on my phone from our deck at lunch-time.

Ten minutes later I shot this one:

There is very little snow on the ground this evening, but we are apparently likely to experience further belts tomorrow – and even on Tuesday. For the moment we are just hunkering down and waiting for this weather to do what all weather here does… go somewhere else (leaving us to our normal mild spring climate)!

Roll on that, say I!