Monday, March 30, 2015
Do You Remove Your Shoes and Jacket on a Cross-Town Bus?
I sympathize with those Air-Canada passengers left on the tarmac on a cold day in Halifax when their plane went down. But the fact that people were outside the plane in their socks makes me wonder just what people think of when they take off their clothes upon boarding public vehicles, of which a commercial passenger jet plane qualifies.
The television news shared the concern of passengers that they were left out on the tarmac for over 50 minutes in such cold conditions. The inference being they were cold and shouldn't someone be doing something about the situation? (It apparently took a while for all resources - not just the fire brigade - to arrive).
I sympathize with that too. But when you get on a plane that is routed through Canada, and you are expected to board or depart the plane at a destination that happens to be in Canada during the winter, shouldn't your shoes and jacket be on your person, as opposed to the over-head compartment behind someone else's carry-on luggage?
Doubtless finger-pointing will occur over many issues. But passengers must be responsible travellers, and be prepared for contingencies that can and do occur in flight, or as a flight begins/ends. They should be listening to the emergency procedures, and place themselves in a frame of mind where they contemplate themselves participating in them.
As someone who has flown in and out of Canada, it has been my experience that passengers quite often are oblivious and/or do not care to observe that being prepared is in their own best interests. That talking on your cell phone or blabbing to the person sitting beside you is the last thing you should be doing during the pre-flight demonstration given by the stewards and stewardesses on just what you should make yourself ready for. If you paid attention to them, they discuss precisely the event that transpired.
Planes do go down. People do need to de-board, sometimes in a hurry.
The demonstrations given in all commercial passenger flights refer to events that transpire on the ground. They aren't teaching you how to open the exit door during flight. There would actually be a parachute fitting demonstration were that the case. And since you may be de-boarding on the ground, it would behoove you to wear something appropriate.
Friday, March 27, 2015
An Hour, A Horse, An Hash of A Harry
It seems that many of us have word processors that correct our spelling. Even Blogger, the host of my various screeds, seems quite unwelcoming to my support of the letter U in the word honour or honourable (It underlines every one just as my primary school teachers did). Some of these programs correct words automatically the moment the space following the word is entered. But what is really important is that many of the word-processor-using public, it seems, are apparently unaware that word processors and their developers did not invent and are not familiar with the languages we speak.
It is how you and I and all those that preceded us speak that determines languages and their use - not the written word! Sometimes the written word is our only guide, such as in ancient texts. But language is a living thing that exists in our conversation and heads. It wasn't developed in source code.
The fact that some bit-napper with a penchant for creating rules such as "Nouns beginning with the letter H must be be preceded by An and not A" and simultaneously holds a job in the software industry does not make him or her right. Neither does that get anyone using the word processor off-the-hook for allowing themselves to write wrong in text editors.
It is altogether a different story when people purposely choose to use acronyms and dubious time-saving spelling devices such as "l33t", "LMAO", and the perfect target for derisive arrows, "<3". Whether or not you find these devices of typed text in our language a boon or a bane, there is actually a protocol followed. Even among those of us who avoid these acronyms like plague understand and follow the logic, or illogic, if that is your perception of them. We are aware that little Johnny and Janey L33t-Sp3kker (Yes, northern-European forms exist), are employing well understood forms of written language.
The rule "Any H-word preceded by 'A' should be changed to 'An'" is not a device that any person speaking agrees with "in all situations". There is one quite obvious reason that is observable in practically all speech wherein this rule has occasion to be followed and it is determined solely by how the word beginning with the letter H is spoken. It is so simply observed, or heard, that even a Hello_World programmer of any stripe can master it.
When the H is audible, as stressed and quite clearly distinguished when the H-word is spoken, it is preceded by 'A', such as a horse, a horticultural centre, and a horrible day at the keyboard. When the H is not audible, as in when the existence of the letter H, or it's removal from the spoken word does not alter how the word is spoken, then it is preceded by 'An', such as an hour, an honourable person. As spoken, our and on-or-able is identical, when spoken, to hour and honourable in most spoken English and English variants. If it is spoken in this manner, it should be preceded by 'An'. If the H is clearly stressed when spoken, it should not be.
Even when English speakers use H-words differently than others do, they still follow the rules I outline here. To people in United Kingdom that talk about their friend Harry, he is either an 'Arry or a Harry, depending solely on how they speak his name. Anyone giving Harry full value will say "Oh, he's a Harry of the first order" while others will suggest "'e's an 'Arry I'm proud to be acquainted with."
Why do word processors fail to account for this and saddle us with programs that incorrectly alter our written noun-ish H-words?
Convenience or an aversion to making their rule-ridden, correction-happy word processing sloth become even more glacial by adding a single rule that requires each instance it's used to reference a word list in memory as big as the document itself before it impliments the correction.
It is how you and I and all those that preceded us speak that determines languages and their use - not the written word! Sometimes the written word is our only guide, such as in ancient texts. But language is a living thing that exists in our conversation and heads. It wasn't developed in source code.
The fact that some bit-napper with a penchant for creating rules such as "Nouns beginning with the letter H must be be preceded by An and not A" and simultaneously holds a job in the software industry does not make him or her right. Neither does that get anyone using the word processor off-the-hook for allowing themselves to write wrong in text editors.
It is altogether a different story when people purposely choose to use acronyms and dubious time-saving spelling devices such as "l33t", "LMAO", and the perfect target for derisive arrows, "<3". Whether or not you find these devices of typed text in our language a boon or a bane, there is actually a protocol followed. Even among those of us who avoid these acronyms like plague understand and follow the logic, or illogic, if that is your perception of them. We are aware that little Johnny and Janey L33t-Sp3kker (Yes, northern-European forms exist), are employing well understood forms of written language.
The rule "Any H-word preceded by 'A' should be changed to 'An'" is not a device that any person speaking agrees with "in all situations". There is one quite obvious reason that is observable in practically all speech wherein this rule has occasion to be followed and it is determined solely by how the word beginning with the letter H is spoken. It is so simply observed, or heard, that even a Hello_World programmer of any stripe can master it.
When the H is audible, as stressed and quite clearly distinguished when the H-word is spoken, it is preceded by 'A', such as a horse, a horticultural centre, and a horrible day at the keyboard. When the H is not audible, as in when the existence of the letter H, or it's removal from the spoken word does not alter how the word is spoken, then it is preceded by 'An', such as an hour, an honourable person. As spoken, our and on-or-able is identical, when spoken, to hour and honourable in most spoken English and English variants. If it is spoken in this manner, it should be preceded by 'An'. If the H is clearly stressed when spoken, it should not be.
Even when English speakers use H-words differently than others do, they still follow the rules I outline here. To people in United Kingdom that talk about their friend Harry, he is either an 'Arry or a Harry, depending solely on how they speak his name. Anyone giving Harry full value will say "Oh, he's a Harry of the first order" while others will suggest "'e's an 'Arry I'm proud to be acquainted with."
Why do word processors fail to account for this and saddle us with programs that incorrectly alter our written noun-ish H-words?
Convenience or an aversion to making their rule-ridden, correction-happy word processing sloth become even more glacial by adding a single rule that requires each instance it's used to reference a word list in memory as big as the document itself before it impliments the correction.
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
Little Stores and Markets Need Unions Too!
As someone who has been a member of a union, I can honestly state that, when the union works together - with it's members and vice versa - they all benefit.
Why doesn't the small businessman do likewise when big-box, corporate cows move in their large operations and decimate the little guy?
For specialty stores, it's much harder. But the mom and pop food and vegetables markets, or variety stores? As far as I can tell, every freaking street corner in a large city is chock full of these places. Why in hell do they whine when the corporate cows move in with their big store operations, and do nothing? I guess it is far easier to close your doors and say "Uncle!"
There are some that have learned.
Organizing and co-operating with your small store competitors to bring a better quality, and/or cheaper product. If you are resigned to losing - then ignore me and your like-small competitors. Otherwise use your head, work with your partners - they can be across town - and organize into a single "logical" business.
Cigarette monopolies dictating your profits on smokes and cigars? Easy. Work together, and CLOSE OFF YOUR POINT OF SALE TO THEM. In fact, when any monopoly moves in, an organized union of small stores can do much to beat the living shit out of the big, corporate cows, and the corporate wholesaling cows.
Denying points of sale - EN MASSE - to little Johnny wholesaler decimates HIS business!
I know from experience that the Canadian wholesalers of all those Pall Mall brands are actually DICTATING PRICE AND PROFITS to every single mom and pop store in town (I live in Toronto). Only every single mom and pop store is NOT so stupid as to allow them to do it! At some stores, if you try to tell the store operator where and how far to go to make a buck, they'll have no hostile feelings about telling them where to go and what they can do with their product.
Big stores and chains can buy in bulk and offer cheaper prices by acquiring product at reduced prices.
Apparently, running a warehouse where large volumes of stuff is housed is a concept small business types are unable to fathom, manage, or undertake on their own, OR TOGETHER. If you look around the web, that is the reaction to big box stores and chain stores and large retail. They act like the only people in the world allowed to operate a warehouse, or to receive large quantities of goods, are big businesses.
I say, that's bullshit.
If Pepsi Cola or Farmer's Wholesaler A-Z can drive a truck, or a freaking train-load of product to "your warehouse", I am certain you and every small store that works with you operating that warehouse can buy the same damn stuff they do at the same price. Moreover, you can learn to do it better, stronger, and faster. And if you are really smart and get THOUSANDS of those small operators together and run a mega-warehouse, you can dictate prices to the wholesalers that will find themselves dreaming of the profits they lost.
Small stores can have "door crasher sales" too. They only need to learn how to do it as nimbly as their competitor.
PS: Nothing takes the wind out of a door crasher better than finding a better offer for identical or near-identical product at a lesser price. Walmart is supposedly the king of prices. Their ad campaigns hammer away on this theme - dropping prices. I hate to tell you this, but very often, even during the same week of a "price drop" on a product at Wallymart, you'll find the same price or better at practically any of the food retailers operating nearby, or even in the same mall/plaza location.
If they are killing business, there are some communities thriving on making Wallymart and any competitor look damned stupid.
Saturday, April 12, 2014
modified By-Tor BBS - Recreation 2014 - Release
I have finally completed what I can to re-create a modified By-Tor BBS. A BBS program circa the early 1980s that operated on the Commodore 64 computer platform which I referred to in this blog post.
Below you will find links to a D64 image file, text documentation, and the four essential files of the BBS program that can be downloaded individually (which are also on the .D64 image file). Grab the D64 file and docs, or grab the 4 PRG files and docs.
You can tool around the BBS via commands, though viewing text files, such as message postings that are longer than one sector tend to lock up the program within the emulator. S-top, C-ontinue, and A-bort keys will help avoid this while perusing the BBS. Blame my mad CCS64 emulator skills (next to none).
Thankfully, the files seem to be readily accessible and viewable within Style's DirMaster which happily drags and drops the files in and out of the image. Darkterm, when run within the CCS64 emulator also happily displays the entirety of file content. Thus, you get the files, and I can leave it to some soul to trial it on a real 64 and let me know if the things I could not test actually work as intended (Transfers, modem/hook activity could not be tested in the emulator).
Read the fast or slow documentation for the full scoop, with the fast docs displayed first in the text file. The document is a manual the BBS never had.
The files are uploaded to Google Drive and are marked for public access. My other browser instance without a cookie seemed to get in fine, so do let me know if anything stops you. You of course need to permit the site to redirect you AND permit use of a secure connection. Click download on whatever you like to fetch. I suggest the D64 as the easiest solution, and then the txt document file since that is not part of the image.
The files... as image and ANSI/text docs. Sorry, no PET version of the docs. People would tire of my colorful, trademark first-letter-capitalized stylings that drove iBeaMers and people with speaking computers crazy.
Updated 23/05/2014 - fixed error in main file (line 90). "by-tor.prg" files have been updated (image&file)
 | |
| Darkterm emulated likes the 'bye' file. The main file of the BBS emulated bombs out on it. |
Below you will find links to a D64 image file, text documentation, and the four essential files of the BBS program that can be downloaded individually (which are also on the .D64 image file). Grab the D64 file and docs, or grab the 4 PRG files and docs.
 |
| An impertinent young person applies for membership. |
You can tool around the BBS via commands, though viewing text files, such as message postings that are longer than one sector tend to lock up the program within the emulator. S-top, C-ontinue, and A-bort keys will help avoid this while perusing the BBS. Blame my mad CCS64 emulator skills (next to none).
Thankfully, the files seem to be readily accessible and viewable within Style's DirMaster which happily drags and drops the files in and out of the image. Darkterm, when run within the CCS64 emulator also happily displays the entirety of file content. Thus, you get the files, and I can leave it to some soul to trial it on a real 64 and let me know if the things I could not test actually work as intended (Transfers, modem/hook activity could not be tested in the emulator).
 |
| The help file from within the BBS, and old school command prompt. |
Read the fast or slow documentation for the full scoop, with the fast docs displayed first in the text file. The document is a manual the BBS never had.
The files are uploaded to Google Drive and are marked for public access. My other browser instance without a cookie seemed to get in fine, so do let me know if anything stops you. You of course need to permit the site to redirect you AND permit use of a secure connection. Click download on whatever you like to fetch. I suggest the D64 as the easiest solution, and then the txt document file since that is not part of the image.
The files... as image and ANSI/text docs. Sorry, no PET version of the docs. People would tire of my colorful, trademark first-letter-capitalized stylings that drove iBeaMers and people with speaking computers crazy.
The files.... as individual files of the program/image. These four files and maybe Darkterm are all you need to set up a By-Tor BBS. Grab the docs from the link above.
I would appreciate any input, especially corrections to anything that may be wrong within the program. Do not expect fast responses from me. I am not online daily.
Updated 23/05/2014 - fixed error in main file (line 90). "by-tor.prg" files have been updated (image&file)
Sunday, March 23, 2014
modified By-Tor / Bytor BBS - Still Forgetting It!
A number of years ago, I dug up some ancient printer dumps of "modified" By-Tor BBS and a few other hard copy bits and pieces essential to operating this Commodore 64 program. Realizing that enough of it was there, and having seen nothing online, I began to type.
Edit: the result is found in this blog post. You can download a copy of your own.
Modified By-Tor is a monolithic, BASIC RAM-filling board that time had full reason to forget. I am sure my recalling it from piracy Valhalla will give persons pause to wonder how on earth something so forgettable can still offend the sensibilities today. But it can, and certainly will "real soon now".
Having typed it all in, a few issues gave me pause and have managed to pause me to this post and beyond. I still haven't made it ready for sharing, and I am no further than I was a a few years ago in getting the chat music working, which I am giving up on.
Visitors to a By-Tor BBS can page the sysop in order to talk with him or her. Unlike all other BBS software during it's era (300 baud/early through mid-80s), By-Tor's chat request function played music on the sysop's computer if the monitor was on and it's speaker volume audible. The visitor to the BBS could also execute the chat command a second time in order to turn off the page/music on the sysop's end of the connection, and had ample reason to do so.
One more unique feature of the chat command was that when the music played on the sysop's machine, By-Tor fired CTRL-G characters to the visitor's machine over the modem connection. CTRL-G in Commodore 64 BBS and terminal programs are wired the same as any other ASCII devices or programs - It rings a bell when the character arrives, if one has been hooked up for the application. If you happened to be quietly surfing BBSs at 3AM, the arrival of these characters would surely wake the dead if you had forgotten to dial down the speaker after an evening of game-playing.
When I generated these printer dumps all those years ago, I had no idea I would rue the day I printed what I did. The vital contents of one file in particular required me to go into my SuperSnapshot v4 cartridge in order to print something useful. The "ml" file in By-Tor holds the Punter.C1 single file transfer code, a screen dump's worth of text that tells a newly connected visitor that the software in use on the machine is 'modified' By-Tor BBS, and finally, just beyond this screen dump lays the very music the BBS plays when chat is requested.
Instead of dumping a series of values to the printer that would allow me to easily recreate the music, I chose to dump SuperSnashot's "Interpret" output. In this mode within the Snapshot's monitor, what is displayed on screen is a rendering of the music values as character data. I dumped that display to printer, which allowed me to easily read the screen dumped information, but it turned the music data into a mangle of gibberish characters and graphics.
When I finished typing in all I needed to type in to make By-Tor go, the only big thing missing was data that would play back the actual music. I tried numerous times to hammer in values that would recreate what I saw in my Snapshot monitor. But each time I was stymied by the din it played. I have never been a Martin Galway or Ben Daglish. So I delayed, put off, and finally forgot about it.
Recently running into the files all over again on a partially working laptop I had set aside, I awoke to the idea that putting it off forever will eventually mean it's loss. Not that I am gasping my last or that the world will resuccitate this mouldering heap of a program. But as bad and clunky and horrible as it was to compose messages in, this 300 baud BBS program had a huge following locally and doesn't deserve such a fate.
When the two DIP switch Commodore 1670 modems arrived and began their crushing of the 300 baud BBS programs out of existence, the final 300 baud Commodore color BBS king of the Toronto area was unquestionably 'modified' By-Tor. It had become the defacto alternative to Darkstar BBS, a locally developed payware color BBS whose army of Darkterm callers found By-Tor's opening screen a tacit demand and very welcoming. It exhorted them to use Darkterm in keyboard mode - but in By-Tor - which they did in droves.
Again, I am putting it off. But real soon now means just that.
Honest!
OK... This time for Real!
Err... Wait and see!
Edit: the result is found in this blog post. You can download a copy of your own.
 |
| Waiting for Call screen in 'modified' By-Tor BBS. Released by 'The Fish'. Original program by Al Hershman. |
Modified By-Tor is a monolithic, BASIC RAM-filling board that time had full reason to forget. I am sure my recalling it from piracy Valhalla will give persons pause to wonder how on earth something so forgettable can still offend the sensibilities today. But it can, and certainly will "real soon now".
Having typed it all in, a few issues gave me pause and have managed to pause me to this post and beyond. I still haven't made it ready for sharing, and I am no further than I was a a few years ago in getting the chat music working, which I am giving up on.
Visitors to a By-Tor BBS can page the sysop in order to talk with him or her. Unlike all other BBS software during it's era (300 baud/early through mid-80s), By-Tor's chat request function played music on the sysop's computer if the monitor was on and it's speaker volume audible. The visitor to the BBS could also execute the chat command a second time in order to turn off the page/music on the sysop's end of the connection, and had ample reason to do so.
One more unique feature of the chat command was that when the music played on the sysop's machine, By-Tor fired CTRL-G characters to the visitor's machine over the modem connection. CTRL-G in Commodore 64 BBS and terminal programs are wired the same as any other ASCII devices or programs - It rings a bell when the character arrives, if one has been hooked up for the application. If you happened to be quietly surfing BBSs at 3AM, the arrival of these characters would surely wake the dead if you had forgotten to dial down the speaker after an evening of game-playing.
When I generated these printer dumps all those years ago, I had no idea I would rue the day I printed what I did. The vital contents of one file in particular required me to go into my SuperSnapshot v4 cartridge in order to print something useful. The "ml" file in By-Tor holds the Punter.C1 single file transfer code, a screen dump's worth of text that tells a newly connected visitor that the software in use on the machine is 'modified' By-Tor BBS, and finally, just beyond this screen dump lays the very music the BBS plays when chat is requested.
Instead of dumping a series of values to the printer that would allow me to easily recreate the music, I chose to dump SuperSnashot's "Interpret" output. In this mode within the Snapshot's monitor, what is displayed on screen is a rendering of the music values as character data. I dumped that display to printer, which allowed me to easily read the screen dumped information, but it turned the music data into a mangle of gibberish characters and graphics.
When I finished typing in all I needed to type in to make By-Tor go, the only big thing missing was data that would play back the actual music. I tried numerous times to hammer in values that would recreate what I saw in my Snapshot monitor. But each time I was stymied by the din it played. I have never been a Martin Galway or Ben Daglish. So I delayed, put off, and finally forgot about it.
Recently running into the files all over again on a partially working laptop I had set aside, I awoke to the idea that putting it off forever will eventually mean it's loss. Not that I am gasping my last or that the world will resuccitate this mouldering heap of a program. But as bad and clunky and horrible as it was to compose messages in, this 300 baud BBS program had a huge following locally and doesn't deserve such a fate.
When the two DIP switch Commodore 1670 modems arrived and began their crushing of the 300 baud BBS programs out of existence, the final 300 baud Commodore color BBS king of the Toronto area was unquestionably 'modified' By-Tor. It had become the defacto alternative to Darkstar BBS, a locally developed payware color BBS whose army of Darkterm callers found By-Tor's opening screen a tacit demand and very welcoming. It exhorted them to use Darkterm in keyboard mode - but in By-Tor - which they did in droves.
Again, I am putting it off. But real soon now means just that.
Honest!
OK... This time for Real!
 |
| Still dickering! |
Err... Wait and see!
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Business Cards in a Particular Vein
One of the unexpected joys of sorting through old stuff is reacquainting yourself with things you forgot you had.
Where I picked this up precisely, I am not quite sure. There were a small number of businesses in the Toronto downtown that had these business cards back in the 1980s. They would have been surreptitiously left alongside other assorted business cards, flyers, etc. You can still find such oddball piles of ad/trash/bulletin stuff today. At that time, you would see these Van Halen Cafe business cards in record stores such as Record Peddler, or in the odd club or maybe even a restaurant. I know I'd seen them numerous times before I actually pocketed one or two of 'em.
I'm none the wiser to the producer of the cards, though I have my suspicions it'd be someone like Nash The Slash or a character of that sort (personality character, not another mummified peformer). His own records included bogus record company addresses and contact information. Places you'd passed hundreds of times, and when you stopped and actually looked to see, you'd rebuke yourself for being so gullible.
The Van Halen Cafe - The Transformation of Waste card was a quiet campaign. It needled playfully without any fuss. Hitting the right chord with anyone who shared the same sentiment, or darkening some Q-107 fanboy's day. But only for as long as it takes them to say aloud "Waste!?! Everyone ^&*@%& loves Van Halen!" to which the gleeful mass of passing, like-minded plebes might retort "&%^@$^% right!" You can only wonder how many people actually walked back and forth near the 600 block, looking up and down the facade with beady eyes, ready to take umbrage the moment they found their way.
Yet each time, a failure.
Brings a wry smile to my face all over again. I hope it brightens and darkens as much as it did back then. Because as we all knew... Van Halen sucked!
Where I picked this up precisely, I am not quite sure. There were a small number of businesses in the Toronto downtown that had these business cards back in the 1980s. They would have been surreptitiously left alongside other assorted business cards, flyers, etc. You can still find such oddball piles of ad/trash/bulletin stuff today. At that time, you would see these Van Halen Cafe business cards in record stores such as Record Peddler, or in the odd club or maybe even a restaurant. I know I'd seen them numerous times before I actually pocketed one or two of 'em.
I'm none the wiser to the producer of the cards, though I have my suspicions it'd be someone like Nash The Slash or a character of that sort (personality character, not another mummified peformer). His own records included bogus record company addresses and contact information. Places you'd passed hundreds of times, and when you stopped and actually looked to see, you'd rebuke yourself for being so gullible.
The Van Halen Cafe - The Transformation of Waste card was a quiet campaign. It needled playfully without any fuss. Hitting the right chord with anyone who shared the same sentiment, or darkening some Q-107 fanboy's day. But only for as long as it takes them to say aloud "Waste!?! Everyone ^&*@%& loves Van Halen!" to which the gleeful mass of passing, like-minded plebes might retort "&%^@$^% right!" You can only wonder how many people actually walked back and forth near the 600 block, looking up and down the facade with beady eyes, ready to take umbrage the moment they found their way.
Yet each time, a failure.
Brings a wry smile to my face all over again. I hope it brightens and darkens as much as it did back then. Because as we all knew... Van Halen sucked!
Thursday, January 2, 2014
Cold Climates Can Kill
You would think that your friends and relatives are a reliable source of information, and the kind of people that would warn you clear of impending doom. But with today's temperatures dropping down to below -10 Celsius, I was reminded that, sometimes, that isn't the case.
Not moments ago, I was witness to a girl dressed as girls often did thirty years ago in a manner I love and admire. A short, half-thigh high skirt (pleated), knit stocking, a pair of Doc Martens, a bomber jacket with a few buttons, and probably the same can-do attitude of girls you might run into while slam-dancing or moshing it up to punk or hardcore punk. No, not that crap they call hardcore today.
She looked positively wonderful and was a sight for sore, weather beaten, freezing eyes. Especially for someone who can appreciate the look.
But below minus ten degrees and falling lower, with a wind chill that makes it more like minus twenty or lower? All that look served to do was make me wonder: Are you crazy?
She was positively freezing, shifting side to side and stamping her feet in order to try and keep warm in the bus shelter. There was no way she could do any of that as cold as it was.
I love fashion as much as the next person. But for a Canadian girl to exhibit such disregard for the obvious - it was that cold all day - it reminded me of a child I once saw when I came home from a trip.
The girl had an excuse - she lives here and should know better. But the child I saw on the arrivals pick-up platform at the airport had no idea what was going on, or why it was impossible to stand still. It was even colder that day, and even I rued the fact that I hadn't brought along my sweater for the return trip home. I knew it was winter in Canada, and there was no excuse to not have the correct weather gear.
The kid could not have been more than six or seven years old, and was idling and shaking terribly beside his parents. Probably waiting on a local family relative who'd said to meet him or her where they stood. The kid was wearing nothing more than a t-shirt, a pair of mittens, slacks you might wear in Bermuda, and a pair of sneakers with no socks says all that any Canadian or cold-weather-living person needs say and understand.
The parents weren't dressed much better, and they too were having no fun. But they were oblivious of the kid and seemed more concerned to find whoever it was that was supposed to be coming for them.
Giving a child a pair of mittens and thinking that child is ready for any cold weather is so wrong, it borders on criminality. Maybe the parents were not from our country and didn't know any better. But that, really, is no excuse.
From what the Commissionaire told me on the platform that day, he said it is commonplace for foreigners to arrive in Canada wearing the same gear they wore back home and being none the wiser to the reality they had brought themselves into. That the very place they were going could kill them in minutes if all they did was to go outside into the existing conditions dressed as they normally do.
I would encourage anyone visiting Canada or anyplace where it snows or freezes to read this guide intended for those who work in the cold in Canada. Given that most people do not work outdoors, and for visitors who have never been exposed to the cold being unlikely to be capable of dealing with anything having to do with the cold, they need to be prepkared to dress even moreso. This includes being able to wear clothes that can be worn well (and not sweat) whether it is above freezing (0 Celsius), or below it.
When you are approaching minus twenty degrees or more, arctic clothing is ideal and most assuredly essential to keep comfortably warm. Real arctic clothing, and not the fake look-alike materials offered by most manufacturer sites and stores. That means real animal hides from arctic climates - caribou, rabbit, fox, etcetera.
There are man-made materials that are designed for arctic climates, and select stores and sites have the goods you need for such low temperatures. But most do not, even locally. Reading something like this (see the PDF) and observing how well people cover themselves when in arctic climates with such extremely thick and warm materials indicates at how truly dangerous living in cold climates can be. This page gives a sample of the military people discussed in first link enduring such climates, and please do note the third image - the white substance on his eyebrows is moisture from his mouth exhaling freezing to his face. Every inch of that person is covered with many, many layers of clothes. Even his face is covered, and still, his face is capable of freezing so well covered. Read the comment. The temperature indicated is warmer than it was today in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Even when dressed well, parts of you can be so cold that you appear/are frozen. Think of diving into a pool of ice cubes and being unable to raise your head above them for many, many hours.
Lastly, a page from a person that likes to run in the cold. Something I too thinks is crazy, yet perfectly normally where I live. Many do it, though it takes a particular kind of person committed to running and wise enough to deal with the myriad issues. That is the second page on the subject, but it goes into some of the very details people fail to understand. Layers and layers of clothing especially. Dealing with your own body fluids (sweat, moisture in breath, etc.) freezing on your body or beside it. To someone from a warm clime, it can be utterly bewildering and dangerous at the same time. Yet it is the very thing so many are ill-prepared for.
Cold can kill you. Don't let it, and don't let your relatives allow you to die.
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