It’s touching how adversity
has a way of making people come closer. In Toronto, we have had endless days — and nights, too — of plus-30?C temperatures.

We have had extreme heat warnings and smog warnings. We have had days when the humidity was so high it encased the city in a hazy fog. We have had nights so thick that even the mosquitoes can’t be bothered to move.

There have been early mornings when I opened the back door for the dogs to find no welcoming rush of cool air. We were greeted by the same hot, sticky wall of stifling heat as the night before.

We have had showers but they have brought no relief. Once the clouds part, the sun comes out and ratchets the humidex up a few more notches.

Everyone is complaining. Even the people who like heat are complaining about this heat. And therein lies its one redeeming value; therein lies our commonality — we all have something to complain about.

It starts at Cherry Beach when I walk the dogs in the morning. I run into James and wish him a good morning. He mutters back, “What’s good about it?” and we are on our way — the first heat conversation of the day.

I run into Ingrid who is wiping her face with a towel. She has joined her dogs for a morning swim in Lake Ontario. “Otherwise the *%#@*! weather would be too hot to bear,” she tells me. We are off on the second weather conversation of the day.

Then there is the effect on people in elevators. In our office building, I ride the parking elevator from P5 (anyone arriving after 9:15 might just as well head straight to P5 — and I arrive well after 9:15), then head for a different bank of elevators for the ride to 12. In normal weather, people get into elevators as if they were empty. There could be 20 people in the elevator and a newcomer has to wedge his or her way into the remaining space, yet the others act as if there is no one there but themselves.

Not now. “Another hot one, eh?” says the person entering the elevator — and the conversation is on its way.

It’s the same on the way down. “Going out for lunch — in this heat!” Before you know it, we’re at the ground floor. I’ve probably spoken to more people in our building in the past few weeks than in the previous three years.

And the heat has ignited controversy. The Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper, has reported on women bringing heaters to work so they can survive the icy blasts of air conditioning — adding to the burden of our already overburdened power system. Male co-workers, no doubt resplendent in crisp shirts and designers suits, have responded with indignity in their letters to the editor, suggesting that perhaps the women could wear more clothes.

Now, Toronto’s alternative weekly newspaper, sharing concerns about abuses of power — electric power, that is — has featured photos of ritzy shops on Bloor Street doing their best to lower the temperature of the city. With doors wide open, their air conditioners are blasting cool air into the faces of beleaguered shoppers.

Then there is my family. Our house isn’t air-conditioned and, although I spend as much time at work as possible, I eventually have to go home to sleep. Sleeping is a bit of a misnomer, however; it is more like collapsing in front of the fan.

So nerves are a little frayed at our place. My husband, who is the holdout on air conditioning, pretends to not notice the heat — or the glares of my daughter and me as I end my day the way it started — complaining about the heat.

Tessa Wilmott, Editor-In-Chief