“I can’t feel my hands!”
Saïd was wearing gloves. His wife, Ghita, was not.
It was February 4th, just nine days after they arrived in Canada from Rabat, Morocco. The winter temperatures there rarely go below 10°C.
Saïd and Ghita had moved into an apartment and were doing the things people do when they begin life in a new country. They had chosen this day to do their first big grocery shopping trip. They planned a dive into the Canadian food experience and were on the hunt for things like maple syrup and donuts, as well as dairy, bagels, and halal meat.
They had no car but had done a Google search for directions from their apartment in downtown Dartmouth to the Walmart in the Bayers Lake Industrial Park. The trip would take about an hour, but most of that would be spent inside a warm bus. It began with an eight-minute walk through a park, along the Dartmouth Commons, to the bus terminal.
Both Saïd and Ghita had seen snow before, during their youth, in Morocco’s high mountains. Their first Canadian snowfall, and their first snowfall as a married couple, had been four days after their arrival. The snow had fallen gently and covered the earth like a perfectly thin layer of cream cheese icing on a carrot cake muffin. They both found it romantic.
Now, a few days later, in preparing to venture out for groceries, Saïd looked up the weather on his phone. It said -22 ° Celsius. A cold day, even for most Canadians. It made no mention of the arctic windchill that would make it feel like -35 °.
“We go out and through the park. We were having fun… And after two minutes, she was smiling and laughing, and then her face changed all of a sudden. And I look at her and say, ‘What happened?’ And she was shocked and very concerned. I said, ‘What? What?!’ And she told me, ‘I do not feel my hands’. And the tears dropped from her eyes.”
The Canadian Government’s website records that winds that day were northerly and gusted to 89 km/h.
Saïd asked Ghita if she wanted to go back. “She said, no, I don’t want to go back. I want to go to the supermarket!”
They hurried towards the heated bus terminal.
“By the time we got there, our eyebrows and everything was white. The snow just iced our eyebrows. It was something that we'd never experienced before. I tried to make her hand warm.”
Saïd didn’t tell her that he couldn’t feel his hands either because, he says, he didn’t want to “spread the panic.”
He tried insisting that they go back but, “She told me no. Snow is our home and home is snow. So we need to get used to that.” Otherwise, how could they teach their unborn children how to survive here, she reasoned.
And so, they continued their mission.
A couple of hours later, shopping accomplished, grocery bags in hand, they awaited the Uber they had called. An Uber was more expensive, sure, but it would take them all the way to their front door, a luxury they were happy to afford themselves. When it arrived, the door was frozen shut- iced over. The very pleasant driver hopped out and braved the cold to help them to prise it open. Inside the warmth of the car, they learned he had only been in Canada for a few months himself. He had come to Halifax from war-torn Ukraine.
Saïd and Ghita have adjusted to many things in their new home, including the weather. Would they recommend people avoid moving to Canada because of the cold?
“Not at all. It's not a reason not to come to Canada. In fact, it's beautiful,” Saïd says. “If it was even minus 44 for six months, I would not say no to Canada. We'd just get adjusted to the climate. Because people who are living here are human just like me. So, I don't see the difference.”
Saïd offers the following advice to people arriving from warm climates:
- Download the Canadian Government’s weather app. “It's more accurate compared to the others,” according to Saïd.
- Buy your winter clothing in Canada. Saïd and Ghita purchased winter outfits in Morocco but “our clothes didn't match the winter here.”
- Buy mittens, not gloves. Saïd has learned that “mittens are more effective against the cold weather here than gloves."
- Wear a toque. Saïd has been in Canada less than 12 months, so he can be forgiven for using a foreign name for an essential piece of cold weather gear when he says, “Put a beanie on your head to not let the warmth of your body go from your head to nature.”
Saïd Allibou has been working at the Museum as a Heritage Interpreter since February 8, 2023, 13 days after his arrival and four days after his hands thawed out.