Turn up the AC — please!
Air conditioning is a human right.
If this heatwave has taught me anything, it’s that the 30 UN human rights — including equality, privacy, freedom of expression, food, clothing, housing and time off work — are essential and admirable. But they can’t beat air conditioning.
I used to say there were two kinds of people: those who can cope with heat and those who can’t. But it was meant in the Stay Calm and Keep Complaining kind of way. In the heat, I cannot cope. My hair is in a state of emergency. My skin takes on a piebald pattern of alarmist red and fish-belly white, and my body feels like a hot glue gun. Touch me and you’re stuck.
I think it’s because I’m half-Scottish. Scots resist basking, lazing, bonbons, enjoyment of all kinds.
But that was then, this is now. This is the third heat, the kind where people die. When temperatures rise to 45C with the humidex the way they did in Ontario and Quebec last week, the world divides into another kind of doubleness: those who can survive it and those who can’t.
The death toll in Montreal keeps rising, mostly older people with preexisting heart or mental health conditions who lived alone. Their last hours must have been unspeakable.
I think of Europe’s famous summer canicule in 2003, which killed at least 30,000 people, damaged harvests, shrank glaciers, and helped cause massive fires. Climate change will have its way with us.
Until it does, I need air conditioning. At the moment, we’re trying to set aside enough money to ensure our children can pay for air conditioning in 2050 because I suspect it will still not be an actual human right at that point. It will be a capacity, a state of mind, a loveliness reserved for the rich.
My air conditioner was too small to cool the house or even a floor so we bought another replacement (sadly American) to be installed today at a price I didn’t much care about. I was desperate. After this heat, I wanted a house so cold that I’d have to layer my wool sweaters and wear gloves to make toast.
I wanted my house to be the Franklin Expedition, that’s how badly I needed cold air.
Guess what. The Montreal office wasn’t able to ship the promised air conditioner. Something had happened. The city was out of stock, the shipper told the installer. Shoppers had been seen fighting over the last one at a Home Depot in downtown Montreal. “It’s survival of the fittest,” said Victor Perchet, who managed to get it.
I could not call the Montreal office to complain about the mysterious delay as I was very much raised in a guilt-based household. It hangs over me to this day like invisible gauze.
If Montreal is going Lord of the Flies over air conditioners, I can hardly ask them to hand one over. People are dying there. Here, too, but we just count our dead more slowly.
Here I was in Toronto, pre-apologizing to a shipper I hadn’t yet called and feeling guilty for having even considered complaining. Their need was greater.
The next replacement, a Fujitsu (not American at all), is coming Monday.
It’s the Indian Motorcycle of cooling, I say. It’s a ductless split. You’ll have heard of the ASU24RLB, I’m sure? I don’t know how to turn on the porch lights but I know my air conditioning lingo.
It’s Energy Star® Qualified with inverter technology and wireless remote control. It runs quiet and Smart, has an Auto Mode and a humidity control that will turn your bedroom air desert-like, better bring some sand.
But perhaps hot sweaty people have invaded the Fujitsu Canada compound and I will have nothing on Monday morning beyond this credulous column. We will have to move to a hotel, a smaller room in which to bitterly complain, and my nerves are worn. It will be another sequel: The Bickersons Visit a Hotel.
One of my local city council candidates, Josh Makuch, came to the door this weekend seeking my vote. “What is the issue that most concerns you?” “Air conditioning,” I said. How embarrassing. I will change it to a nobler issue, “gun control,” but only if my Fujitsu arrives Monday as promised.