Living on an island in Canada is not for the faint of heart. We get here by ferry, which is frigid for several months of the year. Sometimes the ice and snow make it impossible to get “downtown” to work, and the collection of stores and houses are all shut up tighter than drums. The ferry to the mainland for groceries is habitable only in its belly: the warm inner cabin has huge windows which look out on blocks of ice bobbing in the river. We wouldn’t have it any other way, though. We know when spring arrives before anyone in the city, because the ducks and birds come back.…