Tiny me has the pleasure of being interviewed by the charming and hilarious Drew (Andrew Odom) and my wonderful and inspiring twin Laura (LaVoie) of Tiny r(E)evolution. Their funny and vastly entertaining Episode 37 interview with yours truly is here.
The unanswered question after the interview… is it too wild to live there full time? Made me laugh a little (okay… a lot).
It is not all the fault of our American friends that this “WILD UNTOUCHED FREEZING NATION” is the understanding you have of Canada. It is in movies, TV, books and truthfully from a Canadian perspective we like to emulate that we are all Bob McKenzie’s living in igloos to our American neighbours. We can’t help ourselves! We find it funny to keep this joke running. So I vacillate between answering truthfully or taking the Canadian stance and to pull your legs.
Not that Canadians are liars, but we do enjoy telling a fish tale and afterward giggling… I am no exception.
So there are two equally good response questions…
1. Do I have to build THO a customary igloo covering in order to protect it from the elements and use sled dogs to get around 10 months of the year?
Or…
2. Do I live less than 50 km from the US border and have the same weather as New York?
I won’t answer rather I will show you the map of weather zones (for planting) and let you know that THO sits in the yellow zone that is right above Lake Ontario.
The map will tell you that at THO we can expect similar winters to people who live in parts of Kansas and New Mexico. It can also expect easier winters than those who live in North Dakota and significantly better than Minnesota. We really don’t experience very hard winters in the most populated areas of Canada. In fact, is is not until you get North of the 60’th parallel… beyond the tree line… where actually people once did (a hundred years ago) live in igloos.
This said, if you want to sleep in an ice house, in Montreal they build an ice hotel in the winter and you can rent a room there if this is your kind of thing.
THO is roughly 25 km (15 miles) of paved roads from Kingston. The city itself has a population of 125,000 people. Kingston is a foodie town with lots of creative people and amenities. It is also the home of the Ivy League, Queen’s University and St. Lawrence College which makes it a very vibrant intellectually rich city for it’s size. It has a lot of tourism not just because it is pretty, but because it sits at the Thousand Islands and the tri-county region is not only the home of these islands it also has over 1000 lakes so there are cottages everywhere. It is also where the Rideau Canal starts and goes up to Ottawa.
I invite you to visit the city and partake of its culture and sites.
Honestly, there is nothing dangerous that is keeping me from living in THO… it is just a matter of having the money to install a well, a pump, getting running water going, having regular heat, a septic bed to put waste water in and of course, a shed to store my igloo building kit in.
I am getting there a little at a time. For now… I stay there a lot of the year and paint the town.
Thank you Drew and Laura for having me on! It was a pleasure and an honour to speak with both of you. I hope you will get up for a visit sometime! Don’t forget to pack your snow suit!
Tiny House Ontario 