November Rain: Nothing Cold Can Stay

Lock away your hair straighteners, ready your waterproof mascara and dig out your rain jackets—it’s autumn on the Wet Coast once again! Every year our damp weather seems to come as a shock to many of Brentwood’s international students, but it’s just what comes with living in a temperate rain forest, key word: rain. Cowichan may mean “the warm land”, but in the winter we need rain to nourish the evergreen forests, fill the salmon runs, soak the aquifers, and fill up the hydro-electric reservoirs. Some would say that Brentonians are lucky when it comes to the amount of rainfall the campus receives in the month of November. After all, we live in the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountains. We certainly are fortunate in the sense that we only get a third of the rainfall that upper island village Tofino – expecting 475 mm of precipitation in November alone—receives. And way less than Vancouver and the Lower Mainland as well! However, with an average high of 12 degrees Celsius in the fall, many consider the school to be a bit gloomy at this time of year. I find that there are two attitudes (as there are to most things) towards the rain: negative and positive. Certain students identify intensely with Canadian musician Hawksley Workman’s lyrics “autumn’s here, it makes you sad… it’s okay if you want to cry”. They find the rain depressing and they long for—as last year’s Head Prefect Nick Wilson, Privett ’14 put it—the light at the end of the tunnel that is third term. Sunny days, hanging out on the field, cold drinks at Rusty’s are the stuff of dreams at this point in the year. I, however, prefer my childhood idol, Hilary Duff’s philosophy that it’s better to “let the rain fall down and wake my dreams”. Go dance in the rain, run in the rain, and, of course, aspire to be Gene Kelly and sing in the rain. There are plenty of rain-friendly activities that I’m certain the bright young minds of Brentwood can come up with. And is means more snow for skiing on Mount Washington! Embrace the rain, because it’s not going to stop anytime soon. It is simply one of the constants of Brentwood life; it could be called part of the Brentwood atmosphere even. If nothing else, take the sage wisdom of Guns n’ Roses and know that even if you despise it, you cannot hide, one way or another you will “just end up walking in the cold November rain”. In my gumboots, Jaclyn C, Alex ‘16