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Spring, you say?

The Guelph Mercury, 3/18/2009

What’s that bright, yellow thing in the sky? And what’s that strange sensation underneath our parkas and tuques — something vaguely familiar, from the past. Is it sweat, maybe?

The sweetest sound crackled over a police scanner this week. Men were putting out a grass fire — yes, a grass fire — in a field near Cambridge. No one was hurt, and the flames didn’t spread far. It was all over in a few minutes, but it was a trumpet blast for a changing season. The idea that our fields could hold anything but ice, snow and puddles of cold March rainwater should be a cause for celebration.

Spring is finally coming to southern Ontario. And not a moment too soon.

This year, winter came in the second week of November, put down roots, and never left. It was a fittingly bitter backdrop for a daily avalanche of bad news — more factories closing, depressing economic forecasts and layoffs across the country.

The bad news remains for now, but at least we’re being reminded things can change for the better again. That’s what spring does. It has an endless capacity to bring us hope, to remind us that all bad things must pass, and that there are sunnier days ahead.

Suddenly people are feeling good again, almost normal.

Students are crowding around bus stands in skirts and T-shirts. People are actually walking outside, talking to neighbours they haven’t seen in five months, dusting off their bicycles.

Birds are chirping and dogs are prancing.

Why, there’s baseball on television, and nothing says new beginnings like the first sounds of white cowhide cracking on maple bats and snapping into leather gloves. In no time, the crowds will be shuffling back to David E. Hastings Stadium in Exhibition Park, snacking on grilled-cheese sandwiches from the canteen and plunking down lawn chairs along the third-base line.

There’s even a rumour, if you can believe it, that city staff are beginning to move in to the new civic administration building downtown. The first city council meeting is planned there next month. After a long fall and winter of delays, cost overruns and a legal fight with the first builder hired to do the work, the new city hall is almost ready for its debutante’s ball, though some of us found a way to complain about that, this being Guelph, after all.

Certainly, city officials aren’t blameless for the delays. They’ve been accused of changing their minds more times than a teenage girl picking outfits for her first day of school. Throughout construction, they ordered “countless” changes to the project, according to one subcontractor who worked on it. Two weeks before Urbacon was removed as the main builder, the city redesigned the landscaping at the front of the building, which caused problems for the already installed storm and sewer drain systems.

I’ve been a critic of those delays in the past, but it must be said after all this mess we will be left with an attractive, modern and useful structure that ultimately adds to our downtown. For the first time in decades, residents will be able to pay parking tickets, visit the tax office and find the engineering department all in one location. It almost makes sense, doesn’t it?

See? This is what spring does. It gets us right in the guts, and makes us feel good. Makes us see the bright side of things. Even grumpy, pale columnists.