by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

The Mirror recently published an interview with former local pop-star Ivan of Men Without Hats. He has moved to Victoria, B.C. and seems to think it wise to taunt Montrealers about our annual dealings with downy white wintertime precipitation.

“Good luck with the snow,” he says.

For those not keeping tabs, Ivan once cynically invoked our studly snowman—the Bonhomme Carnaval—in a hit single and video, “Pop Goes the World.”

Word on the street is that Bonhomme is taking Ivan’s snow-hating revelation hard, regularly having his car keys confiscated by barkeeps who watch him clumsily roll off Quebec City barstools.

Now why Ivan, a native Outremonter, moved to B.C. is something of a mystery. I suspect the powers that be got fed up of him moping around penniless on Walker Street and swapped him for folksinger Bruce Cockburn and a conditional draft pick.

He should know that dissing your hometown is the third most serious social blunder, right behind mistaking a guy for a girl and congratulating a big-bellied woman for being pregnant.

But Ivan’s insult would be insignificant if winter haters didn’t threaten our city’s very future.

North America has seen a massive population shift away from states with the coldest temperatures towards the southern states. People are swapping their snowshoes and mukluks for sandals. In the ongoing technological battle between air conditioning and space heaters, the AC is winning.

Anti-wintertarians will also surely multiply now that medical consensus agrees that avoiding the outdoors could shorten your life. Diseases associated with sun deprivation are far more many and serious than previously thought.

But Ivan didn’t criticize the slush, biting winds and the bone-chilling cold. No, he picked on the snow. How can you dislike this gorgeous, fluffy, white, soft powder descending from the wintery sky?

To possibly quote a poem you wrote in Grade 3, snow descends slow-motion from heaven and lays a soft blanket over Mother Earth, every beguiling, enchanting flake unique as it entices and enchants children with its willowy allure. You can toss it, slide down it, feel it crunch under your boots, blow it from your hand like a feather, watch it weightily cluster on the evergreens.

B.C. might be warmer in the winter. But I recall wintering there once as a child. It was constant darkness and soggy, waterlogged soil. Just try making snow angels on a slug-laden lawn.

Criticize our terminal wintery darkness, the cruel winds and savage cold snaps, but don’t mess with the sacred flakes from the heavens.

A hint: you might not dislike snow so much if you got yourself a hat.

• • •

The reason Mayor Tremblay got re-elected is the same reason that there’s a permanent “We’re hiring” sign outside the Home Depot. Homeowners are in the loot. Rising home values has allowed them to re-mortgage. They’re spending their cash on renos, private schools for their kids and generally living the good life. No need to swap mayors now.

Montreal, I have argued, should regenerate its historical creeks and streams. I admit not many can be brought back. A lake at Atwater and Dorchester might be a nuisance. But five of the city’s best-known streams sat on McGill campus, and some could surely be brought back. Nag McGill’s landscaping committee to return us our streams.

Tremblay and Bourque both promised to spend tax bucks building thousands more public housing units. This pleases the construction lobby but the great majority of low-income renters don’t benefit from this at all. Cities like Toronto did a rethink and no longer build such units; instead, they give rent subsidies directly to low-income renters. It helps more poor people and also allows them to choose where they want to live.

When a street gang pointlessly murdered Duff Court’s Raymond Ellis at a nightclub, a sea of bad feelings flowed. Some denounced the nightclub, the club snapped back at its harsher critics, all were disgusted by the murderous mob and at least one black person bitterly complained to me that black community leaders are too gutless to denounce black people who kill other black people. All this to say: murder stinks and no good ever comes of it.

Comments? kgravy@openface.ca