On the whole, Canada can boast of one of the most perfect health-giving
climates in the world, despite the two extremes of heat and cold of
which it is composed. But even so, the Canadian climate is cursed by an
evil which every now and again breaks loose from the bonds which fetter
it, and rages from east to west, carrying death and destruction in its
wake. I speak of the terrible--the raging Blizzard!

To appreciate the panic-like haste with which the Foss River Settlement
party left the ballroom, one must have lived a winter in the west of
Canada. The reader who sits snugly by his or her fireside, and who has
never experienced a Canadian winter, can have no conception of one of
those dread storms, the very name of which had drawn words of terror
from one who had lived the greater part of her life in the eastern
shadow of the Rockies. Hers was no timid, womanly fear for ordinary
inclemency of weather, but a deep-rooted dread of a life-and-death
struggle in a merciless storm, than which, in no part of the world, can
there be found a more fearful. Whence it comes--and why, surely no one
may say. A meteorological expert may endeavor to account for it, but his
argument is unconvincing and gains no credence from the dweller on the
prairies. And why? Because the storm does not come from above--neither
does it come from a specified direction. And only in the winter does
such a wind blow. The wind buffets from every direction at once. No snow
falls from above and yet a blinding gray wall of snow, swept up from the
white-clothed ground, encompasses the dazed traveller. His arm
outstretched in daylight and he cannot see the tips of his heavy fur
mitts. Bitter cold, a hundred times intensified by the merciless force
of the wind, and he is lost and freezing--slowly freezing to death.