Hatunen wrote:

Whatever the Canadians benign view of winter, we moved directly
to Tucson from Montreal and I enrolled in grad school at the
University of Arizona. There must be a number of like-minded
Canadians, given the large numbers of them to be found each
winter in Florida and Arizona.

True enough. It's more a matter of being fed up with cold weather than considering snow to be a
natural disaster.
Personally, I have never gone south for a winter vacation. I figure that if I go early in the
winter I still have to come back and face a few months of cold weather. If I go in the middle I
get a nice touch of summer with a winter before and a winter after, so that is two winters in
one year. If I wait until the end of winter it's almost spring anyway, so I might as well stick
it out. The trick is to get involved in a winter activity. If you like downhill or cross
country skiing you look forward to the snow.