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This just in: it’s hot out.
That, and—if your situation is anything like mine—it’s probably hot in too.
I don’t know about you, reader, though I would describe the ambient temperature of my apartment right now as somewhere on the continium south of “balmy,” veering past “sauna-like” towards the vicinity of “infernal,” in the sense of “like one of the outer circles of hell.”
Why pay money to go to a five-star resort in an equatorial country economically crippled by the United States of America when you can get the same experience at home in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada?
Though we don’t have pina coladas or supervised beaches (thanks city council!) one thing we do have in spades for the next several days is heat.
Not the Michael Mann crime thriller. Not the Miami basketball team. Just heat. Hot, hot heat.
If you weren’t up to speed, Environment Canada is saying it’s going to be a scorcher (that’s a technical term). With daytime highs reaching 33–36℃, the humidex making it feel as hot as 46℃, little-to-no cooloff overnight and nary a cloud in the sky, the weather till Tuesday is a recipe for more than just sweat and discomfort.
We don’t tend to think of it as much more than a routine summer nuisance, but heat is the number-one weather related killer in the United States. True, it’s not as spectacular as six inches of ice coating the world, knocking down powerlines and shearing branches off trees, but the extent to which we take heat for granted is perhaps the very thing which makes it so deadly.
Heat, unlike ice storms, is common. Banal, some might even say. While the ways in which heat manifests under the perpetually worsening conditions of anthropogenic climate changes these days are increasingly marginal—noteworthy if not only for their ability to set benchmarks for hottest days on record, than for the fact that their doing so becomes less remarkable with each year as the phenomenon continues to repeat itself—heat remains an invariable fact of life and of city living. We learn to live with it.
Living with it is, of course, a matter easier said than done under such conditions as these. It’s bad out there; keep yourself safe.
It’s weird writing a second one of these check-ins, which I’ve taken to calling “Arthur-patented Extreme Weather Letters,” in the span of just under three months. The Canadian climate has long been fickle, though I think mine and our collective lifetimes are proving more illustrative of what that fickleness—assisted by human disturbance—resembles on a planetary scale.
I swear I’m not trying to be a downer. The heat just gets me this way.
That’s the thing about heat, isn’t it? Heat has a uniquely aggravating quality only compounded by the fact that it’s hard to do anything about it. Cold drinks, box fans, and even A/C units can only do so much to assuage it. Unlike solutions for dealing with winter, heat possesses no corrolary for throwing on another sweater.
Heat sucks. It sucks the sweat from your pores, the thoughts from your brain, the fun from being naked. Instead it leaves that feeling clinging to your skin, the film you can never quite scrub off, that feeling that despite not touching anything wet you still somehow aren’t quite dry.
I’m starting to miss the blackout right now—missing my cold apartment, warm blankets and candlelights. The cold doesn’t get under my skin like this.
Rare is the day when we look forward to going to Peterborough City Hall, though at least tonight we can count on them to have air conditioning.
Which leads me to say, again: Keep yourself safe. Drink lots of water, stay out of direct sunlight, and try to find a place to stay cool. Part of what frustrates me about the response to extreme heat is how quickly we turn to telling people to spend money about it.
Ever had your parents tell you to go to the movies, or the mall, or the…I can’t think of a third thing, but my point stands—to beat the heat? I mean sure, Galaxy Cinemas has air conditioning, but have you even seen what’s playing? I’m sorry but I’m not going to go watch an aging scientologist fellate himself while jumping out a plane. If I wanted to see something that homoerotic I’d catch the twentieth anniversary rerelease of Brokeback Mountain.
Even then, movies cost like $50 or something obscene and the voiceover guy nags you for going on your phone. And if you go to the mall you have to either sit in the foodcourt or pretend you’re actually interested in something at Spencer’s.
Regrettably, I’m not 14, and I’m content with the number of holes in my body as is, so neither of these things appeal to me. Look, I don’t want to spend money to stay cool, and neither do you. Luckily, the City of Peterborough has us covered.*
*Kind of.
Remember that thing I said earlier about the beaches? Swimming is always a reliable way to make this weather at least marginally more tolerable, though in their infinite wisdom (and the interest of keeping taxes down for Northcresters) council decided that the beach at Rogers Cover is NOT going to be supervised this summer. Wizard.
The beach at Beavermead Park is also not supervised until this Saturday so, uh, swim at your own risk I guess?
If you, like me, are less inclined towards total body immersion in the sweet silty waters of the Otonabee and would rather just find somewhere with central A/C, the libraries are as good a place as any to go. Maybe you could take the time while you’re there to write a letter to your councillors complaining about the fact they opted to run the $111,000 fountain over hiring some undergrads to supervise Rogers Cove.
It’d have cost them a third of that amount to do so, by the way. I know; I read the damn budget.
I can’t tell you what to do, however. My stating possibilites for the use of your free time is—lest someone accuse me of conflicts of interest—not endorsement. Councillors please don’t get mad at me. I know you hate nothing more than your constituents emailing you.
To give the City credit where it’s due, there is a list a very (editor’s note: sarcasm) helpful list on their website of ways, in their words, to “Stay Cool as Temperatures Rise”
The post outlines a lot of the same stuff as I have done above: stay inside where possible, stay cool, stay safe. It adds a list of places you can fill reusable water bottles to stay hydrated. There are outdoor water bottle filling stations at the following parks and city facilities:
You can also refill water bottles inside the following facilities during working hours throughout the day:
If you’re a Trent student, there is also the possibility of making use of Trent’s big, shiny, climate-controlled campus which is basically empty at this point of the year—that is, assuming you have a way to get there without melting.
You could do worse than the Bata Library basement today, which is not a sentence I ever thought I’d hear come out of my mouth. That said, if Trent is too out of the way, Sadleir House remains open from 9AM–6PM, albeit with some a bit of construction presently underway.
We’re avoiding it because our office is a South-facing furnace, but there’s air conditioning inThe John, and the rest of the House is usually not nearly as bad as our den in the bit Trent cobbled onto it in the 60s. They don’t make ‘em like they used to, I suppose.
Now, assuming none of the above are to your liking, you could always go to a splash pad. The city has a handful listed that are open till 8:00 PM, with the exception of the one at the Zoo which is open to 7:00 PM.
Those are:
These are probably the kind of things that’s better if you have young kids. In my case, David’s going to take me to a carwash later and use the pressure hose to spray me. (David here: Fat chance! I refuse to leave my A/C hovel.)
Speaking of which, my headache has not gotten any better in the time it took me to write this so I’m probably going to wrap it up soon. A better version of me had planned to finish more articles today, but as it stands I might just go to my friend’s house and eat Kawartha Dairy ice cream straight out of the tub.
Whatever keeps you sane, they say, and it’s sage advice. If you find yourself becoming nauseous, confused, or your skin turning red, try and decrease your core body temperature ASAP.
Ideally, you should know the signs of heat-related illnesses and what you can do to prevent them, an area of expertise Peterborough Public Health’s got on LOCK. The City’s got nothing on these absolute heroes.
Groups most vulnerable to extreme heat include older adults, infants and young children, and pregnant people, so you should frequently check on the perinatal and post-natal people in your life, especially if they’re living alone.
Heat sickness is no joke. It’s actually like, really gross, and believe me you don’t want to deal with that. So long as you don’t have anything to do, today's a great day to crowd into the living room of your one friend who has A/C and make him watch the entirety of Minecraft: Parkour Civilization with you.
I know what I’m doing for the next six hours.
Arthur Robins, signing off.
Managing Editor, Evan Newspaper.
P.S.
Summer heat makes me feel sad. I was supposed to plan to move today. I wanted to be able to show my family my new apartment before they left the country.
Instead, I’m stuck indoors all day, hunting after the myriad mason jars I’ve managed to lose over my five months in this house. I almost wish I had been playing Dungeons & Dragons with Evan, Ian and David.
Speaking of Dungeons & Dragons, this heat makes me feel like David during our sessions: what I want to do right now sounds a little bit like “shill my elf.”
The last time you all read one of Arthur’s famed extreme weather editorials, I was too incapacitated (read: I had a nervous breakdown about being alone in the cold and retreated to my family’s home where I temporarily forgot how to speak English and trained in the ways of Pierre Vallières. Just you wait, anglophone scum) to put finger to keyboard, and I really wish I had something fun to share with you all this time around.
Instead, my roommate—former staff writer Willow Latella—and I have camped out in the room of our absent roommate, who happens to keep a $700 full floor air conditioner all to herself. I don’t think she’ll ever read this, but if she does, I’ll tell her I had heat sickness and made it all up. I doubt she’ll believe that.
Evan’s right, extreme weather is mundane, unremarkable even. It makes me feel a little bit insane. It makes me think about the people I’ve tried to forget about out of convenience.
I wish I could still call my grandpa and hear him talk about how the heat dome wouldn’t have happened if Quebec had seceded from Canada. Problem is, I don’t know what he’d have to say about my transition. I don’t really want to know. This is one of the waiting rooms of life that I’m not particularly intent on getting out of.
This waiting room, with its temperature fifteen degrees below the rest of my house, I can’t wait to leave. I’ll tell you (read: everyone on the world with an internet connection) a secret: these three fuckers have got me kind of excited to play DnD again.
Don’t mention that when I’m out of here. I’ll tell you I had heat sickness and made it all up.
Drink lots of water,
Arthur Vallières.
Co-Editor, FLQ Daily.
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