Its first ‘green’ Christmas leaves Labrador town stranded It is Marion Broomfield’s 77th winter in Mud Lake.
To the septuagenarian, a Mud Lake winter means snow piled up to the eaves. Piled so high you can walk off a drift and onto the roof of your house. It means looking out the front window, at the Churchill River, and seeing an endless highway of ice, a great frozen track with snowmobiles zipping back and forth between Mud Lake — population 49 at last count — and Happy Valley-Goose Bay.
“I don’t ever remember seeing a green Christmas,” she says. “I remember it being mild, once, on New Year’s Eve. I’ve been out spreading my laundry on the clothesline.
“I wasn’t wearing any gloves.”
Balmy weather would be welcome in many otherwise frigid places. But in Mud Lake, it is a Christmas catastrophe. The community has been cut off from the rest of Labrador for the past 11 days. There are no roads in or out, and the mile-wide Churchill River has been too full of ice to navigate by boat and not frozen enough to cross by snowmobile.
“Normally, there are about five days when you can’t get across, and people accommodate that by stocking up on groceries and essentials,” says Dave Raeburn, a Mud Lake local. “But everything is right off the charts this year. It’s been crazy. We are probably looking at another two weeks before the river freezes up. We have no cold weather in the forecast.”
It was 2 Celsius outside on Monday. Two years ago, it was minus-23.
Mud Lake has a church and a community centre. And that’s about it. There are no grocery stores. Or shopping malls for anxious, stranded consumers, such as Mr. Raeburn, who has yet to purchase a Christmas gift for his wife.
“She’s the last one on my list,” he says.
But help is at hand. The provincial government is sending a helicopter to the area and will shuttle people to and from Goose Bay all day Tuesday, and again on Dec. 24.
It is a 15-minute round trip. Ms. Broomfield is and isn’t looking forward to it. It is her 77th Christmas. She has spent the previous 76 at her home in Mud Lake. Her kids, their kids — and their kids’ kids — would come by snowmobile on Christmas Eve to spend the night and Christmas Day.
“Some of my grandchildren that are up in their 30s now have never had a Christmas Eve in their own homes,” she says. “It is a sad thing for me, in a sense. But I guess I had to be rooted out of here sometime.”
She would have hosted 16 people for a turkey, ham and duck dinner with all the vegetables, too. Once upon a time she served salt cod and potatoes. Now, she gets to be something new: a dinner guest.
Ms. Broomfield is not concerned about doing any last-minute shopping by helicopter. She bought her presents early in the fall to avoid any potential pitfalls, including never-before-seen climatological ones.
“I like to get things done when the boats are still going back and forth,” she says.
What she is going to miss most, in addition to the frozen river and the sound of snowmobiles loaded with revellers drawing near, is the annual Christmas Eve church service in Mud Lake. The tiny community could not find a minister who was available to make the trip.
“Hopefully, Santa makes it over. Santa always comes through for the kids,” Ms. Broomfield says.
“Tuesday is the first day of winter, the shortest day of the year. And pretty soon, it’s going to be March — and then winter will be over.
“Hopefully, next year, Christmas will be at my house.”
With a frozen river outside, and snow piled up to the eaves.
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http://www.nationalpost.com/news/first+ ... z18iR2iTxH Whew... fortunately weather events make for good climate change evidence.
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