It's a Bird, It's a Plane It's... Geographers!

Hurray for obscure pagan rituals! Today we celebrated the winter solstice. In my six years here at Concordia, this is the first time I ever hear of the Geography department's winter solstice party. This time, I was invited! Every year, the staff and faculty ride up to the tenth floor of the Library building, go through the boiler room and up onto the roof of the building. From there, one by one, everyone climbs up a ladder to the topmost part of the building. Don't go too close to the edge, there's no railing! At the very top of the building, Dr. David Frost put up a weather station and for the past ten years, the good people of the Geography department have toasted to the return of longer days by this weather station. Traditionally, Dr. Frost would bring up some chardonnay disguised in a 2 L bottle of gingerale. However, Dr. Frost passed away in May and this year's party was also a bit of a memorial. We all poured ourselves a small glass of "Magic Gingerale" and toasted to the sun at exactly 12:00 pm. We were all gathered around the weather station, huddled in our big coats, hats and mitts.

Surprisingly, it was not very cold up on the roof. The sun was shining brightly, there was not a cloud in the sky and there was almost no wind. And the view was incredible. From 13 stories up, Montreal is such a beautiful city and it looked so peaceful. What a view!

Anyway, after a while it did get cold and we took our turns descending the ladder to the lower roof. The lower roof is great too because there's a huge vent that blasts out warm air so it was very warm waiting there for everyone else! We returned to the Geography department to enjoy refreshments, such as fougasse, hummus, cheese, fruit, cookies and eggnog heavily laced with brandy. Yum, how can you go wrong?!