Everest2: Ridgetown District High School, Canada

One of the reasons why I love Canada is the weather. Spending my ‘formative years’ knee deep in snow during the winter and knee deep in lake water during summer are two of the key highlights of growing up in South Western Ontario. The weather is generally quite predictable and, being a farmers daughter, has always played a dominant role in dinner table conversations particularly during planting and harvest season. Given that my father has since retired and weather now only seems to determine what clothing I’ll pack for my regular visits back to Canada, it was a slight surprise that ‘weather’ dominated the dinner table conversation on Thursday evening and ultimately impacted the Canadian-portion of the Everest2 programme.

I’d travelled that morning via an 8-hour flight from London to Canada for some home-cooking courtesy of Mom and also to work with the students of Ridgetown District High School (RDHS) as part of the Everest2 programme. I must admit, I was super excited about returning to a place that had played a dominant role in my life for 5 years (grade 9 – 13). Although RDHS is a small school with about 300 students, it is the cornerstone of the local community serving the residents of Ridgetown. My presentation was ready, I wasn’t too jet-lagged, and my gargantuan, monstrous kit-bag had made it over from the UK without any dramas. It was all going smoothly until the topic of ‘weather’ surfaced…

“There is the possibility of 8 – 10cms snow starting tonight” announced the weatherman. Wicked – I love snow!! What great timing – not only can I present at RDHS but I will also see SNOW!! What the weatherman neglected to mention that 8 – 10cms could possibly turn into about 20cms and be accompanied by strong winds…

Growing up on a farm with a father who had a secret obsession with his John Deere tractor-powered snow-plow AND John Deere tractor-powered snow blower has made me a bit blasé about the ‘snow days’ because , growing up, my brothers and I effectively never had a ‘snow day’. Whilst other children used snow days as an opportunity to catch up on the latest cartoons, build snowmen, and have quality family time,  my father would listen to the weather in the evening, smile with delight at the prospect of a fresh dump of snow and rush down to the barn to plug in the diesel tractor, preparing it to be fired up for an early morning start…

The following morning, the house would be filled with the smell of toast while Mom prepared our breakfasts and outside, dressed in his warmest overalls Dad would be revving the diesel tractor, black smoke billowing through the air and as he ‘snow plowed’ his way out of the barn through the 3-foot snow drifts.  the radio would be on the local station, the newsreader blaring all of the school and bus cancellations for the area and be warning all motorists to ‘keep off the roads unless it was an emergency as the conditions were extremely hazardous.’

About 15 minutes later dressed in our warmest snowsuits and with lunchbags  in tow my mother would load the 3 of us (Ryan, Adriaan and myself) into the tractor with my Dad and he would literally ‘snow plow’ us the 7 kms to school… Generally, we were the only ones in the entire school apart from one or two teachers and one or two other students with equally snow-plow happy fathers (generally Dutch?!). We would then proceed to spend the day in the school library watching movies until being collected by my father in the tractor that afternoon when we’d had our fill of child-friendly Hollywood blockbusters.

So, the long and short of the story is that I never really thought a ‘snow day’ would ever affect my ability to go to school but Friday morning proved to be the exception (particularly as Dad is now retired and only has a small, much less industrial push blower…). My heart sank this past Thursday morning as the radio began to blare out the school and bus cancellations and as a steady layer of snow continued to accumulate outside of the front door… A SNOW DAY – in MID MARCH?!

Ridgetown District High School and the buses that served it were affected by the cancellations on March 11^th – the day that I’d scheduled to present to Ridgetown District High School. I was hugely disappointed - I’d travelled all this way specifically for the presentation and was actually really looking forward to being back at RDHS and working with the students to develop the programme.

Elliot, the fantastic teacher I’m working with at RDHS did brave the weather and was at school that day so I did pop into the school and walk through the halls that I used to stroll through about 15 years ago (omg!). I took Elliot through the presentation that I was meant to give and explained relevant anecdotes, concepts and terms and agreed next steps. We decided that he would do the presentation to his Social Science class on my behalf and that he and the students would give me a call following the presentation so that I could answer the students questions directly.  Given the circumstances, it was a good solution and there was little alternative. The students were about to go on their March break (equivalent to the UK half-term) so even postponing my visit by a few days wouldn’t have worked logistically. 

That Sunday evening as I flew back to London I couldn’t do much but laugh at my whirl-wind weekend in Canada – I’d had a great visit home, relaxing and caught up with family and friends. I’d eaten my weight in home-cooking, had a great catch up with Elliott. There was a certain’ irony’ in the situation given that I was about to head off for 2 months into a relatively unpredictable environment where the weather has the inherent and unquestionable power to ‘make’ or ‘break’ an expedition and a summit attempt… Perhaps fate was subtly teaching me yet another lesson in advance of my trip to Everest. Perhaps a second attempt at presenting at RDHS is on the cards - second time lucky?! We shall see.