Stag editor Jules Xavier has spent more than a decade experiencing Manitoba’s winters after he moved east from Vancouver Island. Despite the occasional Arctic Vortex providing residents on the prairies with consistent daily temperatures in the range of -25 to -38 C (not including the wind chill factor which makes it feel much colder and can be dangerous when it comes to skin exposure and frostbite), Xavier enjoys focusing on the winter landscape and seeing the transformation on the Base with advent of winter following the fall season. Soldiers still ride that bikes to work, while the outdoor arena is a popular spot to play pick-up hockey or for a family skate. The artillery pieces scattered around the Base, or the gun park at the RCA Museum, take on a different look thanks to Mother Nature’s blanket of snow. Hoar frost dresses up the trees and anything it touches overnight, like the Base’s two churches, providing wonderful snowy landscape photographs. Why not use the hill adjacent to the dog park to take the family for a toboggan run. There’s plenty to do on the Base and its hinterland despite the long winter months, so get out and enjoy. But remember to bundle up and cover up if there’s an Arctic Vortex keeping the winter temperatures below -25 C. Here’s a sampling of what you can expect this winter if Mother Nature brings a few feet of snow as she did in 2021-22.