how the winter gallops

here comes another montreal winter. here comes the dark horse.
how i talked myself into staying a couple more seasons in this city i don't know. they say the snow will fall soon; the windows are icy with freezing rain. last year was my first "real" canadian winter. before then the coldest day i'd endured was minus twenty five at whistler snowboarding. when i'd had enough i ducked home, back to the damp rain forest of the west coast. i didn't mind last winter in essence.
there were some good times. every saturday for a couple months fabienne and i would meet in the plateau then make our way to mount royal. the hill was full of cross country skiers, well-known queboise actors (who, natuarlly, i had no recognition for but still found exciting when pointed out), dogs, kids on sleds, ect... for an hour or so it almost felt like i was out of the city, something i constantly craved.
one day in december in ottawa i was alone at my in-laws. it was minus seventeen, i braved a walk for a can of tuna and everywhere a sharp orange sunlight hit the bare trees in the park, the frost on the roads, and when the wind shook the branches tinkled.
in the early spring i walked alone to the lachine canal one afternoon. the sun was bleak, the sky was grey, the ice of the canal was soft and unimpressive. i paused on the bridge and looked out at this landscape which had always reminded me of how far from home i was and suddenly for whatever reason i stopped feeling alienated for a moment and realized that this strange place had entered my sense of identity. i could no longer entirely idenitify with the west coast because here i was day after day looking out over this forgein place. montreal had replaced something in me. i didn't like it, but i couldn't deny it. i felt a strange sense of pride for my home of the last year.
for the most part, though, the winter was hard. i became pregnant in november and spent several months sick, exhausted, unemployed, lonely and homesick. until a month or two ago when i contiously decided to expell this association from myself, a mere photograph of a snowy landscape could make me dry heave. i didn't think i could face another winter like that.
this winter's circumstances are much better, and come march we're heading homeward.