The miserable inevitability

March comes in many guises. For some, there is springtime: a burgeoning of life, a renaissance of joy and a brief, blissful interlude when birds sing, daffodils bloom, and little fluffy sheep prance joyfully in the meadows.

This, however, is not what Ottawans and Ottawackers experience. March takes on its mantle of "the cruelest month" with some glee (having inherited it from February, who in turn inherited it from January, etc. etc.). There is snow and cold. Or a day of sunshine and bitter cold. But mostly it is grey. The salt works its wonders on the roads, but leaves snowbanks brown and grey, besmirched and begarbaged. The snowbanks recede, more quickly than glaciers for the time being, but like the glaciers, they give up their corpses.

Most of the corpses in Ottawa tend to be of the Tim Hortons kind. Plastic cups chucked from windows, blown out of bins, dropped from garbage trucks as they jolt through the capital's potholes. Roll up the Rim to Win...

Few people win - despite the recent technological snafu that told pretty much every contestant in a competition they had won $10,000. Most people lose. But nobody loses as badly as nature, which is covered in non-recyclable, non-biodegradable shite. Another firm sold to the Americans, reducing quality and destroying the planet, one broken dream at a time.