Canada is winter. With our warming climate, I feel like I’m losing a part of me

This First Person column is the experience of Hilary Duff, who grew up in northern Ontario. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ.

Earlier this month, my friend and I went chasing winter.

With a car full of sports gear and hot chocolate supplies, we left a disturbingly mild Ottawa and headed for Quebec City. We arrived a few hours later to the sight of snow piled higher than parked cars. Everything was a fresh powdery white, so unlike the salt-filled slush we had left behind in Ottawa.

Winter, finally! That weekend we glided along the Lac-Beauport skating loop, got lost snowshoeing in Jacques-Cartier National Park and sped down the historic toboggan slide in the Old Town. We posed with Bonhomme, the beloved icon of the city's winter carnival and plunged into an icy river at a Nordic spa. All around, boughs of evergreen trees were blanketed with snow. Our weekend in Quebec offered the dose of winter I've been desperately craving. As someone who spends half the year working in Europe as a cycling guide, it was the winter I returned to Ottawa to experience. Yes, I might be the one person who actually runs toward winter instead of away from it.

The following week in Ottawa, temperatures reached 8 C and I went on a jacket-free jog. My route took me along the Rideau Canal, where the sun reflected off pools of water that had formed along the world's largest skating rink.

For the past two years, the skateway has been an underwhelming destination. In 2023, the Rideau Canal failed to open for the first time in its history. Climate activists hosted a vigil, declaring the site a victim of climate change. While the event elicited some chuckles online, I think it is worth coming together to grieve what is slipping away from us, including Ottawa's identity as a winter city.

WATCH | Outdoor skating on thin ice:

Halifax stops testing ice thickness as winters get warmer

1 month ago

Duration 2:02

The Halifax Regional Municipality has stopped testing frozen lakes and ponds to determine if the ice is thick enough for skating, citing climate change as a primary reason behind the decision to stop the program.

These back-to-back experiences in Ottawa and Quebec City connect with a question I've been asking myself with increasing frequency: Who am I if not for winter?

I'm not the only one pondering the relationship between identity and environment. It's connected to a bigger conversation others are having about how climate change affects not only our physical health but also our mental well-being. This phenomenon is called ecological grief: the emotional and spiritual loss that comes when the land we love is rendered unrecognizable because of environmental change.

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A few weeks before my trip to Quebec City, I was hopeful Ottawa would get a proper, long-lasting winter. I had spent the afternoon cross-country skiing along the Ottawa River, the sky a vivid blue. It was -23 degrees and the wind stung my exposed skin.

Now this is what I'm talking about, I thought, blinking my frozen eyelashes.

For me, winter is those crisp days when the wind chill is intense and there's not a cloud in the sky. Days where the frigid air tickles the hairs of my nose and where my extremities ache as they warm from the cold. Days where the temperature plummets so low that the diesel in the school buses turns to gel and classes are cancelled. Yes, in the northern Ontario of my childhood, this was a thing.

I'm not exclusively indulging nostalgic sentiment by wondering who I am without winter. Winters in northern Ontario weren't perfect. April snowstorms elicited their fair share of expletives, piling on endless layers of cold weather clothing was exhausting and the "slush" season between winter and spring was my least favourite time of year.

In fact, I didn't even like winter for most of my childhood, grumbling as my parents insisted on snowy walks and cross-country ski outings.

It's only in adulthood that I've come to realize how much winter means to my identity. Today, I can say with certainty that I am a byproduct of the seasonality of where I grew up. I've always felt a sense of optimism in new beginnings, inspired by the annual thawing of winter into spring; an inkling of tenacity and stubbornness shaped by my refusal to wait out the frigid temperatures indoors.

That weekend in Quebec City reminded me of the winter days I love most: hours spent outside, cold but happy. When my friend and I visited the half-frozen Montmorency Falls, I looked up in awe at the dramatic ice formations as we trudged to within metres of where the cascading water slammed into the basin below.

The force of the water was immense. At that moment, I thought not only about how much I love winter but also how humbled I am by the power of nature. It was a much-needed reminder of all that the planet is capable of, and how I am just one tiny speck among it.

For this is a slice of my identity: a winter-loving Canadian whose individual presence belongs to a much greater whole.

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