Winter Gear
Mine is the black one with the furry hood.
Winter is here. It takes us longer to get out the door in the morning because we have to “winter up” before walking outside – put on our second pair of pants (layering pants is a game changer), slip on our buffs (neck warmers), put on our hats, don our coats, make sure we have our gloves, and then step outside our apartment door to lace up our boots in the hallway.
I noticed when we moved into the apartment building that our neighbors kept their shoe racks outside their front doors in the hallway. I’ve never been the person that insists on removing shoes when entering the house; I used to wear outdoor shoes in my own house. But here in the winter, there is no other way. There is so much snow and slush on the sidewalks, mixed in with the salt and gravel that is thrown down to melt it, that your boots get covered in it, and when you walk inside where its warmer, it melts into a brown gravelly puddle on your floor.
So it’s customary here to remove your boots at the door before walking inside anyone’s home. Not only homes, but also yoga studios, gyms, and even hotels, doctors’ offices, and cafés. They might supply slippers for customers to wear after they have removed their boots, or sometimes disposable booties for customers to slip over their boots and keep the floors clean and dry.
House party inside, line of boots outside.
And, most everywhere you go will have a vestiaire (cloakroom or coat check), where you can hang your coat while you visit the museum, go to your yoga class, etc. After I acquired an amazing, high-quality winter coat, my first reaction when I left it unattended in one of these public cloakrooms was, “What if somebody steals it?” Some of these coats cost as much as CAD $700 to $1,000 new. I asked my Canadian friend about it: “Do I have to worry about my coat being stolen?” She laughed and said, “No, that’s not a thing!”
When my brother visited from the US, he insisted on bringing his shoes inside my apartment, because he was worried about someone stealing them from the doorstep. My friend visiting from the US also had the same reaction when I told her to leave her shoes outside: “Won’t someone steal them?” I said no, everyone in the apartment building does it. She replied, “In the US, for sure someone would steal them.”
I thought this might be an exaggeration, but I found this news article about how multiple people were robbed at gunpoint in DC and Chicago with the robbers ordering them to hand over their Canada Goose brand winter coats.
