A Canadian Experience

So I’m in Canada. Here on business but a bit more extended than usual due to the amount of things to do. As a result, I’m staying over the weekend. Its early February, so when in Canada, that basically means snow and lots of it.

For the saturday, I decided to head out to the Hamilton air museum, which is about 1 hour away from Waterloo (South, I think). The museum itself is OK, mostly small planes, but the “stars” of the museum have to be the Spitfire, Hurricane and Avro Lancaster. Apparently, the Lancaster is the last flying one left. Thats both good and sad. While I was there, it was under repair, so the engines were stripped down and access was difficult. At least I got to see it.

If you like planes, its worth the trip. You can even see a Starfighter on a stick.

On the way back I’m driving and speaking on the phone (speakerphone). I’m just driving without really having any direction, and I’m heading down a quiet, narrow country lane. Snow is on both sides of the road. I decide to pull over to talk on the phone, and pull onto what APPEARS to be a flat area with snow on top. Bad idea. Turns out the “flat area” was in fact a ditch with a ton of snow on it.

The car went down noticeably to the right as I pulled off.

Uh-oh. This isn’t going to be good. “I gotta call you back”. I got out and it still didn’t look too bad, so I put my Hyundai crap-box into reverse and hit the gas slowly. Spinnnnnnnnnn…. No movement. Forward, Spinnnn…. No movement. Tried this a few times and looked at the car. didn’t seem that bad but it wasn’t budging.

As I’m walking around the car, another car passes with a load of college kids. They see my predicament, and pull over. I would not expect this in the US. Three of them are guys and immediately offer to help push me out of the ditch. I can’t believe my luck.

I get back in the car and we try that. We only seem to succeed in making the car lurch even worse to the right. One of the guys then goes to his car and pulls out a shovel. A shovel! These people are prepared. They joked that this is normal and common. I was just grateful someone was there to help.

He then proceeded to dig the snow out from under the right wheel. The snow must have been at least 2 feet (65CM~) deep on that side. We tried it again. Forwards. Backwards. Forwards. Backwards. All to no avail. The car was now leaning at least 20 degrees to the right. I was concerned. This little car is clearly not equipped for snow.

Someone pulled up in a pickup and offered to get his tractor. The consensus was “we can handle this”. OK….

At this point another person pulled up a 4×4 jeep. The others seemed to know him and worked together to attach a strap to the back of my pathetic vehicle. I put the car in neutral and the jeep pulled me out effortlessly.

I thanked everyone profusely and we went on our way.

I was very lucky. And All I can say is, Canadians are great. Awesome people. I could not believe how quickly I was saved and how kind and unselfish these strangers were.

Awesome.

I then drove back to the hotel carefully. I avoided any snowy spots. You know, just in case.