Great Canadian Winter Driving Horror Stories

[rousseau]

Inspired by the conversation with a Sicilian in another thread.

My wife grew up in Taiwan. One year her sister and a friend came to visit us in Hamilton during Chinese New Year. Which is in January/February.

I got the bright idea of doing a road trip to Montreal and Quebec City. And everything was going perfectly fine on the 401 as we passed Kingston, but like a frog slowly being boiled to death in water that started out tepid, the conditions started to turn, and gradually got worse. It started snowing, and then the snow got heavier.

And heavier. And horizontal. It started covering the entire roadway. For a whole hour the car was quiet as I strained to stay in visual contact with a lone pair of taillights way up ahead. They were the only thing keeping me from going off the road, but I couldn't speed up to get closer because of how much snow I was driving over.

At one point my sister-in-law piped up and asked: So, is this normal for driving in winter in Canada?

Uh, yeah, I said. Nothing to worry about. Meanwhile, I was absolutely terrified and pleading with the gods above that the Cornwall exit would hurry up and appear so that we could get off the damned highway.

It did, and we spent the night at a hotel there before proceeding on to Montreal the next day. But that was absolutely the worst winter driving I've ever experienced, and it was a classic case of tourists in a situation where they don't have a clue that the locals are secretly quaking in their boots!