Welcome to winter
CBU students get first taste of Cape Breton’s colder weather
Alen Joe Francy and Sethu Sugathan clearly remember the first time they experienced snow.
After all, it was only two days ago.
The first-year Cape Breton University students from southern Indian were at their Sydney apartment on Tuesday when Cape Breton received its first blast of wintry weather. “We were in our house only, and when it first started it was a heavy wind,” Francy, 25, recalled while sitting with Sugathan, 26, at the CBU library Thursday. “And then we we found it was dripping something like wool, something like that, we thought.
“Then we came outside and only we found that it’s actually snow, snow is starting falling.”
Francy and Sugathan are just two of the more than 1,000 students at CBU getting their first taste of winter. About half of CBU’s students are now from outside Canada, and the vast majority — more than 1,000 — are from India. The rest hail from 40 different countries, primarily China, but also Bangladesh, Vietnam, Nigeria and Kenya.
The sudden arrival of so many people accustomed to warmer climates has even led CBU to launch a coat drive.
As part of the Welcome to Winter campaign, CBU is encouraging the public to donate gently used or new winter wear — including hats, scarfs, mittens, gloves and coats —at all local Walmart locations. Donation boxes will also be set up at the CBU students union, library, and president’s office.
“This is the first time that we’ve done this kind of a coat drive,” said CBU spokeswoman Lenore Parsley. “We are doing that because of the influx of students who are from hot-climate countries, but also we recognize that students have tight budgets and we want to help alleviate some of that worry and help them out where we can, and doing a coat drive is something we can do to help.”
CBU staff will collect the coats Nov. 24, then sort and organize everything for a free pop-up shop at the campus on Nov. 27 for students and their families.
Judging by sales at the CBU bookstore, many students have already begun gearing up for the cold.
Manager Jenny MacDonald said CBU-branded gloves, hats, mittens and fleece hoodies are moving briskly.
“I have one scarf left — we’ve never seen that before,” she said. “I’m trying my hardest to get more scarves in because that’s what people are looking for as well.”
Francy and Sugathan are also already outfitted for weather.
They bought coats and gloves a couple of weeks ago, and, like the snow, it was also a novel
experience. Kerala, the state on the southwestern coast of India where they’re from, has a wet, tropical climate. The average temperature year-round ranges from the low 20s to mid-30s.
“We experienced 10 C in India,” Sugathan responded when asked the coldest temperature she’d felt prior to coming to Cape Breton.
When reminded that winter doesn’t even officially start until Dec. 21, Francy expressed a mixture of disbelief and resignation.
“This weather, we can’t imagine what it’s going to be, and actually we will feel like, ‘Oh gosh, this much wind and this much weather, that’s a real problem.’ When we are in our home, that’s OK, then we can
manage, but we can’t go outside.”
Sugathan seemed almost alarmed.
“Somebody told me it will go to -15 C in the winter — that really frightens us,” she said.
For more information on the Welcome to Winter coat drive, visit www.cbu.ca/keepwarm.