What Do Canadians Do All Winter?

Canadians I have known, and I've known dozens of them, come in three basic varieties based on how they respond to winter.

With the entire country either covered in snow and ice or up to its backside in grimy rain from October through April, lots a otherwise loyal Canadians just get out of the country (retired people, rich people, migrant farm workers).

Others just carry on as if nothing was happening, as if a wind-chill factor of minus 40 or 16 days of torrential rain and high wind made no difference at all to their lives.

I know a few people in the first camp (they are nice enough, but simply can't stare death in the face) and a couple in the second (who clearly have a physical defect that makes it impossible to feel pain), but most of the Canadians I know stay here, bitch about the nasty weather, and look for ways to divert their attention from the deadness of the world all around them.

The methods of diversion range from bloodsports (hockey, hunting, Holt Renfrew sales, radio talk shows, and running after sexual partners half their age), to mind-numbing busywork(reviewing and reorganizing all the stuff in THAT drawer of stuff you don't need and can't throw away, getting ready to do your taxes, making lists of things you will never do, playing bridge), to making things that never existed before (which includes whittlers, whistlers, fiddlers, scribblers, artists, and designers).

Those in the last category have always existed in Canada. I have no idea how many of them there are now, but I know a few, and the ones I know best are a band of designers called BARK.

BARK started just a few years ago as a movement to get some attention for the inventive side of being Canadian, in particular our gift for creating useful things. They believe Canada is a Design Nation that can hold its own with lots of other countries on this score--well maybe not Italy, Finland, Denmark, or Japan, at least not for now, but with most of the rest. And they have been on a pretty relentless campaign to prove it.

Their first show was in Tokyo in October 2003 and was called NO APOLOGIES NECESSARY. This exhibit of Canadian Design right in the heart of everything cool and up-to-the-minute created a small sensation. It was so unexpected. It was so good. BARK followed up with a new show in London (yes England) just a year later called RED + WHITE. Again, Canada got noticed and noticed in a new way: as a nation with its eyes open and more than a few ideas in its head.

Right now, BARK has a new project up and running. It is called the All Terrain Cabin (ATC), a smart, sleek, sexy, thoroughtly modern cabin for the 21st century that can go anywhere. In transport, it looks like a standard shipping container. When it gets to where it's going (by truck, rail, ship, plane, or helicopter), it unfolds and deploys (in about an hour) to become a self-sufficient home for 4 people and a pet. There is water and a filtration system on board and a biodiesel generator with an Inverter that converts DC to AC.

It's all Canadian, from the aluminum container itself to the knobs on the drawers and the music on the stereo.

The ATC debuted in Calgary in September and moved on to Vancouver (the Home and Interior Design Show) in October. It was a huge hit with all kinds of people--designers, anti-designers, kids, grownups, city slickers and country folk.

BARK is hoping to take the ATC around the world to show something of what 21st century Canadians can do beyond the cliches of logging, mining, brawling on ice, worrying the United States. Over the next 4 years or so, they hope to take the little cabin to some of the design capitals of the world--certainly they will return to Tokyo in 2007), but also to places off the beaten track so that people without any special interest in design can see it and judge it for themselves.

The Government of Canada kicked in some money to help launch the project, but further funding from that source is anything but secure. To finance the continuing travels of the ATC, BARK is seeking sponsorship from companies who want to be associated with this tough, smart, mobile showcase of ingenuity and technology as a vehicle for carrying their message abroad.

BARK, which is a registered not-for-profit organization, also offers memberships via their website, and right now, there is a fundraising campaign running on a website called GiveMeaning to help send the ATC on a World Tour. It seems fitting that this product of the Canadian imagination that has such broad appeal should have a broad base of support in its journey.

Canadians get up to lots of things in the winter. Most of what they do is of no interest to anyone beyond themslelves. But every once in a while, Canadians produce something that is both imaginitive and thrilling--and more amazing still, without wearing hockey pads or a helmut.

Check out Canadian Design. Be ahead of the curve.