Essays in Idleness

Wiarton Willie, up in Bruce County, was unable to see his shadow this morning, thus portending an early spring for Ontario. He is consulted every year at Candlemas — or, Groundhog Day, as it is known to my (very secular) fellow provincials. Punxsutawney Phil has more famously performed the same function in the American state of Pennsylvania. That Wiarton Willie has been consistently more reliable than the scientific meteorologists, is reported in all our local media, which, in turn, are notoriously unreliable.

Shubenacadie Sam in Hants County, Nova Scotia, and Fred la Marmotte in the Gaspésie of Quebec, have agreed with Willie’s projection, as have other animals including Lucy the Lobster in Canada’s Far East. Thus, I begin to suspect that all are in the pay of our perpetual Liberal government. Woodchucks out west, such as Okanagan Okie, have meanwhile suspiciously confirmed this, by expressing their dissent. Prime Minister Carney will thus assign them six more weeks of winter.

This is significant, for it has been quite brutally cold, lately — indeed, below zero on the white man’s thermometer.