Vacation Staycation .

With two years having passed since my last White Christmas, I was looking for a really Canadian winter holiday. I’ve been watching my favourite movie on loop a lot lately: One Week, starring Joshua Jackson (of Dawson’s Creek fame). In a moment of existential crisis, Jackson’s character Ben Tyler buys a motorcycle and rides from Toronto to Tofino, BC, on an apparent quest for a mythical creature from his childhood (but actually, in search of answers to life's deeper questions.) Inspired by Ben’s impulsiveness and a nostalgia-inducing Canadian soundtrack, I wanted to do the same.

With only 2 weeks of holiday from work, driving across the entire country was unrealistic, so I settled for a flight to Calgary and a rental car to take me from Banff to Jasper via the Icefields Parkway — only one of the most scenic drives on Earth (according to National Geographic). I wanted to see a part of Canada that I didn’t know, wander the mountains, spy on caribou and (watch other people) ski.

SKATING ON THE RED RIVER

But the days ticked by in Winnipeg, and she just drew me in, just like she does. I wanted to go skating, and walking around the park. Hanging out with my friends watching documentaries on Netflix grew more appealing than wandering the mountains on my own, and quite frankly, I was compromising parts 2 to 4 of the coupon tour.

By midnight on the 29th, I was on the phone with Air Canada, trying to explain why someone would voluntarily check-in online for their flight, then in the middle of the night — 5 hours before departure — call in to cancel. Thankfully “I changed my mind” was an acceptable answer.

And that was that. Flight cancelled, hostels unbooked, car unrented. Without leaving the 10-km-radius comfort zone that surrounds my house, I had my true Canadian winter, and the fact that the only wildlife I saw was ornamental actually doesn’t upset me at all. 

CROSS COUNTRY SKIING AT THE ASSINIBOINE PARK

My two weeks were spent getting Christmasy with the fam; sipping spiked eggnog by an overzealous radiator with old friends, reminiscing about Mexican supermarket excursions and past lives in France. Bundling up in my full body parka and heading to the golf course for a cross-country ski around the green (white?); walking through the park in -35˚, freezing to the point of physical confusion, arriving at my café destination and removing as many items of clothing as is socially acceptable — a mere step away from the hypothermic who gets completely naked before inevitably moving on to the next life.

And that’s what winter’s all about, guys! I didn’t need to go to Banff to feel a “real” Canadian winter. I mean, let’s get serious, at -35˚, how much more real can it get?