For someone whose job is reporting the news, I spent most of Monday avoiding it, or at least avoiding news from south of the border. To paraphrase Gerald Ford as Nixon resigned in 1974, our long national nightmare...has just begun. Yes, including in Canada.
A couple of weeks ago I bought a replacement remote control for our cable box, given that the old one had already seen heavy-duty service during the 2016 campaign, first Trump administration, the 2024 election...and the fast-forward button didn't any more. Essential for enduring US news reports and late night comedian monologues involving mimicry. If only we could fast forward to 2029, when, in theory, the orange menace will be history. (But don't count on it. The "guardrails" are gone, and authoritarians aren't known for graceful exits.)
So it was with a gloomy mindset that my spouse and I bundled up and took the dog for a quick walk yesterday morning. As we headed down the sidewalk toward a local trail, we encountered an older man walking toward us, someone we'd never seen, and I use "walking" generously. Yes, there were icy spots here and there, but he was taking the shortest steps imaginable, a tall penguin in a toque, tilting side-to-side, moving ahead by increments. It was unnerving. We greeted each other in passing and agreed that it was a bloody cold day.
Fifteen minutes later, completing our extended half-circle and exiting the trail farther down the road, we saw at an intersection a block away a disturbing scene. Someone appeared to have collapsed, a driver had stopped, gotten out of her car, and was leaning down to help. Immediately we realized it was penguin man on the ground.
My spouse took the pup home and I hustled over to see if I could help, assuming that the driver and I would lift him to his feet and get him back on his very slow way.
She turned out to be a PSW, though, and advised against it. The man, whom we'll call Tom, was alert and seemingly unhurt, no blood or bruises, yet he was understandably dazed. Up close he looked older than I'd thought earlier—maybe pushing 80. He said that he was house-sitting, taking care of dogs, that the house was just up around the next corner. Could we please help him up?
The PSW called for an ambulance. As the minutes ticked by, Tom started to shiver. The morning was bright but it was also minus-12, thanks to our latest visitor the polar vortex. The PSW retrieved some reusable grocery bags from her car, and we tried to wedge them under Tom's bum. Frostbite didn't seem imminent, but it didn't seem impossible either, given his trousers' thin fabric.
And here we get to the point of the tale.
As the PSW and I leaned over Tom, propping him up, and as she spoke to the EMS dispatcher, vehicles continued to pass us along what's usually a fairly busy road. On this occasion there was less traffic than usual, but approximately every third driver stopped. Some rolled down their windows to ask, others parked and walked over. Even one of those Amazon delivery drivers perpetually in a hurry parked his tall white van and came over to inquire. I stopped counting after eight or nine drivers asked if they could help.
All these people, stopping when they didn't need to, offering to help people they didn't know—Good Samaritans we call them, including the Sikh Amazon driver. (Compassion isn't the exclusive domain of any religion, nor in fact is religion required.)
My gloomy mood had taken a hike, ruminations about how screwed we are as a species temporarily put on hold.
Then came Mountainview guy, so dubbed for his bright company truck. He looked familiar. Turned out he was a Pelham firefighter, and that's when it clicked. Two weekends ago I was driving down Haist as he was headed the other way, up the hill at a good clip, toward Fire Station 1, his volunteer's green light blinking in his windshield. In one of those quintessential small-town twists, 10 minutes later he's getting out of a fire truck across the street from us, pulling up shortly after I got home, attending a neighbour who had become seriously ill.
So here he was again, by provident coincidence in the right place at the right time. After a quick chat with Tom, he returned to his truck to get a pair of surgical gloves, then asked Tom's permission to find his wallet. A moment later the ambulance arrived, two startlingly young paramedics on board. (Inevitably, most medical professionals now seem way too young to me—my gastroenterologist looks like a Crossley co-op student.)
Happily absent during this incident was anything political. No one was parroting party talking points or angry social media memes. The drivers who stopped didn't predicate their offers of help on whether Tom did or didn't believe in global warming, or whether the PSW or I were enraged about carbon taxes, or trans people, or vaccines, or the HST holiday. We were just humans struck by the plight of a fellow human.
The paramedics took over, asking Tom questions—what town was he in, what year was it—and from his hesitant answers it seemed increasingly possible that he had in fact wandered off, that maybe there was no house-sitting happening. Yet it's equally possible that the trauma of the fall and the bone-chilling cold had taken their toll, that he'd need to warm up before regaining his composure. There but for the grace of...
The PSW and I stood back, watching. She held her grocery bags.
"All these people stopping," she said. "That would never happen where I live."
"Where do you live," I asked.
"Welland," she said. We watched the paramedics.
"Understood," I said.
***
I went home for lunch. Ninety minutes later snow started falling. For awhile it was almost white-out conditions. Toward the end of the afternoon Environment Canada issued an extreme cold warning, which we posted here on the site. Because it was so cold, the snow that fell was as perfect as snow gets. Bright white, confectioners' sugar almost lighter than air. I don't ski, but I'm betting this was a skier's ideal powder. The landscape turned into a postcard picture of winter. The snow stopped and the sun returned just before it set, bathing it all in a golden finishing glow.
For a while, anyway, humanity's better nature asserted itself, altruism was its own reward. Does helping others help us help ourselves? Sure, and that's fine. As a friend reminded me today, Mr. Rogers told us to look for the helpers. So let's keep at it. As nice as yesterday turned out, there's clearly a bitterly cold winter to come, storms south of the border threatening yet more division and discord. So we stay focused on each other's humanity first, offer bum-warming grocery bags as needed, and stay huddled for warmth against the icy onslaught.
