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Fun fact: the North Pole is located in the middle of the freaking Arctic Ocean and is numbingly cold even in August. I may have been Canadian, but I lived in Vancouver, which was very much “one of these things is not like the others” when it came to winter in our country. I had zero tolerance for cold. Rain for 100 days in our city? A bit gloomy, but no problem. Snow, if we got it, lasted a week tops, which was good because Vancouverites tended to explode in panic at having to drive in slush, and freezing temperatures were thankfully not the norm.
I was layered to the teeth in a down ski jacket, fur-lined boots, a massive fleece scarf wound around my neck up to my eyes, and fat ski gloves, all courtesy of the one year I’d tried snowboarding. It had been an unmitigated disaster.
The c
