I had originally written this editorial saying I was glad to see that Northern B.C. had a real spring.
One day after I wrote the editorial, however, it snowed. I had already told my friends and family that the weather in Northern B.C. was great, so they were definitely surprised to see my videos of snow in mid-June.
In upcoming issues of Lakes District News we will talk about the challenges of local producers. What I’ve been learning so far is that, surprisingly, weather is one of the main challenges for producers in the Lakes District (well, I guess the snow last week just proved that point).
Northern B.C. had one of the warmest springs on record in 2016, mostly because we were seeing the last gasp of El Niño, which has been declining since December 2015. As El Niño dissipates, however, we won’t see the same warm trend continue into the summer.
Although seeing snow in June was a bit disappointing, I must say that I am quite relieved about the mosquito situation in Northern B.C.
Before I moved to B.C. I was living in Northern Saskatchewan, and the mosquito situation there was, how should I put this, a little different.
When I went out for a run in the evenings, I had to use mosquito repellent on all exposed parts of my body. One day I forgot to use repellent on one of my hands, and I was surprised to see that my hand was full of bites when I returned home.
Sometimes not even using repellents would be enough. One day a bug somehow got under my T-shirt without me noticing. When I returned home I counted over 20 bites. One time I was outside using FaceTime to talk to a friend and my friend was shocked to see the amount of mosquitoes flying in front of my phone’s camera.
When I was sitting outside having lunch with my co-workers, I could not focus on what anyone was saying because it seemed that all mosquitoes were targeting me (and I’m sure they were).
I even read a news story while I was living there about a soccer practice being cancelled in Alberta because of the amount of mosquitoes (I don’t know about you, but that was the first time I read something like that).
And every time I talked about (or complained about) mosquitoes, people in Northern Saskatchewan seemed to be unaware of how bad the situation was.
They would usually ask me, “You’re from Brazil, aren’t you used to this?” That is a fair question, I guess, considering that mosquitoes in Brazil can transmit dangerous diseases and we were likely the ones to blame for the current epidemic of the Zika virus.
But my answer was always “no.” I had honestly never seen anything like that. So when I moved to Northern B.C., I was a little apprehensive about the mosquito situation.
Although people here complain about mosquitoes from time to time, I can definitely say that the mosquito situation here is not nearly as dramatic as it is in the prairies.
I really hope the mosquitoes don’t appear all of a sudden and that I don’t have to rewrite this editorial for the third time.