It ain't the humidity. (1995 summer in Canada)(Column)

This year 1 spent part of my summer in Winnipeg, land of the Sikorsky twin-rotor mosquito. There's something quintessentially Canadian about the mosquito, I think. Most of the country suffers their reign in the summer months, even as we endure the snow and cold in the winter. Hardship makes us stoic, about life, about politics, about everything but the cost of cable television.

It's with some alarm, therefore, that I report the mosquito count was down in Winnipeg in July. In a city accustomed to the annual flying blood donor clinic invasion, this has the inevitable result of a lot of people walking around with entirely too much of the stuff of life flowing through their veins. It upsets the body chemistry. It makes old men dream dreams, and young women see visions. Or maybe that was just the cable TV reparting on the weather over the rest of the continent.

It's been a weird year, all right. No bugs where there should be bugs, no rain where there should be rain, and no northern cod anywhere except in Spanish nets. But mostly it's the heat. And being a knee-jerk opportunistic columnist, it's my sworn duty to point out that this uncomfortable rise in temperatures is all the result of my not having air conditioning. I mean it's the result of global warming. And if it really is due to global warming, then all I can say is cash in your RRSPs and buy stock in air conditioner manufacturing.

I realize a lot of you do have air conditioning, for those unbearably hot months, and as you read this you may find yourself wracked with guilt over the fact that someday all those CFCs are going to leak out of your A/C unit and blow a five-mile wide hole in the ozone layer directly over your house, after which you'll be able to barbecue steaks just by carrying them home from the butcher's. You may be thinking about taking a vacation to some place where they still have an ozone layer. I want to assure you that there's no need to do this, because nowhere is safe.

Actually, I want to assure you that there are now alternatives to those nasty CFCs that fridges and air conditioners used to use, and for a small second mortgage a uniformed repairperson will come to your house and bang a metal toolbox into the door of your fridge, forcing you to buy a new environmentally safe fridge. All is not lost, however, as ...