“I have trouble understanding what’s fun about summer! It’s hot and humid, we sweat, the sun is harsh, going to the park and the swimming pool is blah…” Pierre Duchesneau is a real summer grump, free translation of summer grinch. With his pale complexion and blond hair, he sees summer as a “hard time to get through.”
“I’m definitely not a summer guy,” says the 46-year-old Montrealer. “I don’t understand these people who travel by the thousands to festivals. It’s a nightmare! If it’s sunny too, it’s horrible!”
PHOTO MARCO CAMPANOZZI, THE PRESS
Pierre Duchesneau
Mr. Duchesneau is not the only one who is looking forward to fall and the return of cooler weather. Marie-Pier Beaulieu much prefers November to July.
“Summer is work,” the thirty-year-old says with a laugh. “It seems to me that it’s rare that we sit on the terrace and do nothing. We have to submit to summer fashion, it takes a pedicure, sunglasses, a canvas bag to replace the leather one…”
In addition to generating expenses, summer comes with added pressure.
Marie-Pier Beaulieu
The Montrealer who works in the television industry travels by public transit. She doesn’t enjoy her comings and goings as much these days, she admits. “In the summer, the city has a sticky side… Bare armpits on the subway, it makes me sick!”
Humidex, odors and insects
With five children aged 3 to 17, Marianne Dufresne would like to enjoy summer: it would make family life easier and simplify the choice of activities. But nothing doing. The mother does not tolerate the heat or the temperature amplified by the humidex factor.
“I admit that when the youngest want to go to the park, I try to pass it on to someone else,” says the woman who suffers from allergies during the summer. “I take my vacations in the winter and I do more activities when it’s cold: I go walking and sliding, I go to the Granby Zoo with the kids…”
Adélaïde Larouche, 23, a student at Polytechnique Montréal, also deplores the stifling side of summer.
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, THE PRESS
Adelaide Larouche
Often, it’s too hot. We sleep less well, we breathe less well, in short we live less well. Apart from swimming, the activities are not fun or are more painful. In addition, there are too many insects and the streets smell bad!
Adelaide Larouche, 23 years old
Another aspect that confronts her during the summer season: the acceleration of extreme weather phenomena. “Summer has become synonymous with natural disasters with forest fires, floods, tornadoes, nothing is going well anymore…”, she says.
A ditch
Seasonal depression doesn’t just occur in the winter: about 10% of people with the disorder experience it in the summer, according to the American medical information site WebMD. Summer seasonal depression was recognized in 1986 as a variant of seasonal depression by the DSM, the bible of psychiatric disorders published by the American Psychiatric Association since 1952. It causes loss of sleep and appetite, fatigue, irritability, anxiety, a depressive state that can lead to suicidal thoughts.
For retired psychologist Pierre E. Faubert, we must not forget that some people are unable to enjoy summer because they suffer too much, from physical or mental illnesses.
Like Geneviève Fradette. Suffering from an autoimmune disease that makes her suffer more in the summer, the forty-year-old from Rimouski avoids the sun. She stays indoors almost all the time and only goes out on gray days, early in the morning or in the evening, wearing long, covering clothes.
I can’t participate in my children’s school activities. I try to keep my spirits up, but I’ve definitely come to hate summer. The sun affects my quality of life so much!
Genevieve Fradette
Still others do not enjoy all the benefits of summer, often highlighted on social networks and in the media. “There is this constant rhetoric where we talk about cottages, swimming pools, waterfronts and vacations,” mentions Pierre E. Faubert. “The majority of people do not have access to that, whether in part or in full! I believe that it is not so much summer that some people do not like, but rather their subjective experience of summer.”
Another factor to consider when talking about whether or not you like summer? Money – and what it buys in terms of comfort and leisure. “There’s a performance aspect to summer,” thinks Marie-Pier Beaulieu. “In Quebec, summer doesn’t last long and there’s pressure to ‘enjoy’ it to the fullest.”