H-h-honestly, w-w-winter ...it's not you, it's us. Really

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Freed found shelter and a �great attitude� toward winter when he visited Moscow.

Now is the winter of our discontent, and Josh Freed wants to know why.

Life Below Zero is the humour writer and filmmaker's typically entertaining, offhandedly insightful study of a love affair between Canadians and cold weather gone wrong. It screens on CBC's Doc Zone tonight at 9.

"Amazingly, no one has tackled the subject before on film," Freed says. "It's like we're in denial for something we experience our entire lives."

Freed's theory is that the country that once revelled in all things frigid has now become a place where winter is shunned, suppressed, ignored, avoided and generally believed to be a very bad thing. With his creative cohort and co-producer Barbara Doran, he travels to other global frost spots to find out what happened to the hearty Canuck.

Before that, however, he looks closer to home, to his native Montreal and Doron's St. John's, to see how those cities cope with ice and snow. Montreal mounts the world's largest and most expensive campaign against winter, dispatching fleets of blowers and trucks, scary ski-doos and little No Parking flags in surprisingly ineffective efforts to tame the arctic beast.

Newfoundland simply digs out, grins and bears it. If it's not snowing on the Rock, it will only be doing something else. Naturally, it's where they came up for the idea of this film. "It was winter in St. John's. We were freezing to death."

Freed learns that we used to embrace winter, used to skate on outdoor rinks, climb mountains to ski down them, cut holes in the ice for the joy of fishing with no bugs, and strap on snowshoes to shuffle through the woods. He reveals an old government advertising push to downplay six months of our year, the better to woo immigrants to this great cold country. The beginning of the end, he says, was the construction of Montreal's Place Ville Marie complex in the 1960s and the trumpeting of the underground city. Others have followed suit. Our current virtual summers of shirt-sleeve shopping and outdoor sports played inside are the result. Freed calls us "mobile moles."

He explores another phenomenon -- the snowbird. A no-hardship trip to Fort Lauderdale's Little Quebec in Florida coincides with the annual CanadaFest there, where organizer Louis St-Laurent, grandson of the Prime Minister, praises the climate and wonders why we aren't all with him when the sun never shines in "the land of the freeze," a trademark Freed line.

Enough with the negativity, says the man who admits he's spent the "last 10 years ducking winter, after growing up outside like other kids." He goes to Russia and witnesses the annual migration of 10,000 brave souls from their dachas and overcoats to bathing suits and less, the better to appreciate a brisk winter swim. "It was bizarre," he says of filming the Russian ritual, "but it was also fantastic and invigorating. They have a great attitude to winter."

If Russia is what Canada used to be, Scandinavia is what Canada could be. "They heat their sidewalks, so people don't break their hips. It saves money on hospital bills in the long run. They leave a layer of snow on the streets, so it looks wintry. Everyone skis everywhere. They paint their homes in bright colours, to reflect the sun. They throw outdoor barbecues and parties. It made me rethink winter. We're such wimps, when you can have so much fun."

Freed brought that thinking back home, and discovered there is something like a resurgence of winter spirit in this country, too. There's Igloofest and Nuit Blanche in Montreal, Winterlude in Ottawa, the venerable Carnival in Quebec City, Toronto's Winterlicious, Edmonton's Winter Light Festival, and even Winterruption in balmy Vancouver. The below-zero born-again Freed welcomes these budding signs of a national love affair rekindled.

"Don't endure winter," enthuses Freed, who's trying to organize an outdoor burger and icicle party at his place. "Embrace it!"

-- Postmedia News

TV Preview

Life Below Zero

CBC

Thursday at 9 p.m.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 9, 2012 D4