Snowstorms and mega-mansions
There’s apparently a blizzard taking place outside my house. According to the Calgary Herald, this week will see temperatures averaging -15 degrees Celsius or lower during the day. I actually ventured outdoors this afternoon to see what all the fuss was about, having recently survived a prior ‘snowstorm’ that had me grounded in England for an extra week. To my surprise, my toes didn’t immediately freeze; a major contrast to what happens when in Cambridge. Same shoes, very different experience. However, while I complain that the damp cold in England is far worse than any kind of blizzard we might have over here, I will admit that the kind of weather we experience here is quite debilitating.
However, we do have the proper clothing, equipment, and housing to deal with what the English might consider to be the apocalypse. Case in point: the mega-mansion next door. The main floor is a mammoth 3600 sq. ft (multiply by 2 and add the sq. ftge of the basement and you get something close to 8,000 sq. ft in total). Forget the heated garage; the actual driveway is heated so my neighbour never has to shovel. Witness the steam rising from his carefully pieced together stone floor amidst blankets of white. While part of my counter-culture shock has included being a bit ‘put-out’ by the ostensibly indulgent use of space, my foray into the white wilderness today has given me some perspective on such mega-mansions.
Simply put, we need the space. Since we can’t be like the English, who, in my experience, spend more time outdoors than us supposedly ‘outdoorsy’ Canadians, we need to have enough livable indoor space to conduct our daily lives without experiencing cabin-fever. Our homes are like mini-worlds, with entertainment centres and multiple rooms. We don’t really need to congregate in a town centre; there is no incentive or reason to. That said, I wonder how much of our predilection for mega-mansions is about the weather than about our differing conceptions of space. If our city was constructed to have an actual centre, at a reachable distance, and at which we could find all our amenities, resources, and social entertainment, might we not spend our time there rather than podded up in our own homes?
