It has been a cold and snowy winter in Toronto. I enjoyed the two back to back snowfalls that saw the city disappear under over fifty centimetres of white stuff and I enjoyed the cold days that bite at your cheeks too. I didn’t really enjoy the almost three weeks it took city staff to clear the sidewalks and pedestrian crossings, but that’s another story.
Now, I’m ready for spring. The French part of me is really, really ready for it. The Canadian part of me isn’t fooled by the few days of above zero temperatures here and there and knows it will be a while yet. Still, in just a few more weeks, after the traditional Easter snow (don’t laugh, I have photos of my boys standing next to snow bunnies, which if you’ve never seen one are snowmen with bunny ears and whiskers) spring will come bursting in. Spring isn’t an early affair in Ontario, nor is it a discreet, gradual one. It is more akin to a sudden explosion of fireworks than it is to a slow awakening, and I love the anticipation of it.
In the forty years since I left France to settle in Canada, I have learned to be (somewhat) patient while waiting for it to arrive, I even find joy in that anticipation, knowing that the reward will be a glorious, stunning explosion of colour, after a long season in black and white.
At the beginning of winter, I sent a couple of film rolls to be processed and scanned to the lab. That, for me, is another source of joyful anticipation. When I received my scans, I realized that some photos of last spring were on one of the rolls. I never posted them, so here they are, in anticipation of the real thing.
I hope spring has arrived wherever you are (I realize it’ll be fall for some of you), or that you will soon be rewarded for your patience by an abundance of beauty. I think we all need it.
Valérie