By Barry Rueger
Published: Globe and Mail
December 18, 2025
980 words
A few weeks ago, we began our Christmas season with the Advent Procession service at Great St. Mary’s in Cambridge. Like all older stone-built churches in Europe, St. Mary’s has no heating system. Despite our scarves and heavy winter coats we were shivering by the time that the choir and organist had finished, and even Rev. Clare Stephenson, who led the service, and offered us her blessing as we left, had the look of someone who was very ready for a warm fire and a glass of Christmas cheer.
The British are a proud people. They are justifiably proud of their history, still dwell on their memories of empire, can celebrate literary icons like Chaucer and Shakespeare, and more recently still have vestiges of waning pride in their rejection of Europe during Brexit. But more than all of that, the British find their greatest pride in being cold.
Before moving to Cambridge, where my wife Susan is studying for her Master of Philosophy in Musicology, I had of course heard the jokes about slippers and cardigans, and about the British obsession with not spending money on heat. What I now know is that these weren’t jokes – they were the very foundations of a national culture.
We’re renting one of the Charterhouse terraced cottages in the village of Grantchester, on the outskirts of Cambridge. It’s a lovely home, built around 1880, with a great landlord, and the 250-year-old Blue Ball Inn just two doors down. That pub turns out to be a very good thing because when our home is too cold to stay in, the pub always has a roaring blaze in the fireplace. The downside is that our bills for cask ale and pork pies are approaching what we pay for electricity.
We have a Smart Meter from EDF, our electricity company. Minute by minute a little light is either green (good), amber (caution), or red – you’re using too much power! The screen shows us exactly, to the penny, how much we’ve spent on energy as each day progresses. During the cold snap in November that daily number crossed £10. Our Canadian minds quickly translated £300 a month to $550 Canadian dollars!
What I’ve learned since arriving in Britain is that yes, everyone wears layers of clothing indoors, and that yes, likely only one room in the house is heated at any time. Old houses are drafty, and the heating systems are unlike anything I experienced in Canada. Our cottage has “storage heaters,” which take advantage of half-price overnight electricity rates (charging double the rate we paid in Vancouver) to heat large, heavy ceramic blocks inside of a radiator. In the morning when electricity prices jump (to triple Vancouver rates!) that stored heat is allowed to escape and heat the room. At least until around dinner time, when the stored heat has run out.
As I sit on the sofa, reading, with my feet curled up under me keep them warm, or while we snuggle under a duvet while watching the BBC, I’m reminded of our home in Canada. Homes there have big gas or oil-fired furnaces, double glazed windows, and (oh how I miss it) under-floor heating. I remember being able to walk from room to room and stay warm no matter where I went. I look back fondly on turning up a thermostat without a moment’s hesitation, making everything just a little bit warmer because, really, it costs so little.
Like a lot of Canadians, we’ve spent many evenings watching programs like The Crown and Downton Abbey. In both series the most memorable set pieces show people deep in discussion beside a roaring fireplace. What I now realize is that 10 feet away from the hearth people were likely shivering frigidly. Even the wealthy and powerful in Britain live half the year in the cold.
Because the heating systems in British homes are so spartan, almost every single room in the house – including the bathroom – has a small, plugged in, electric heater to “take the edge off” the cold. These inefficient little boxes do warm things up a bit, but are an expensive solution.
Although their homes and apartments may be cold, the British people are genuinely warm and helpful. When we’ve complained about being chilly, they’ve been quick to suggest solutions.
“Layer the floor; even newspapers under a rug stop the cold coming up.” “Eat something warm and calorie-dense before bed to keep core temperature steady.” “Cafés with poor ventilation tend to be warmest; linger.”
And my favourite: “A small pet is effectively a mobile heat source. Cats are the most efficient, but anything warm-blooded helps.”
Which is not to say that the British couldn’t also improve their insulation, and add weather-stripping to doors, and price their electricity a little bit more for comfort than profit.
Of course, when I look back fondly on our toasty, warm Canadian homes, I can’t help but think about how they were heated. In B.C. you might be able to use the power from hydro-electric dams, and in Ontario from nuclear power plants, but more likely your furnace still burns natural gas, or in Atlantic Canada, heating oil. We were warm all winter in our Nova Scotia farmhouse, but the oil heating is one small part of the global warming that led to this year’s Maritime drought.
The other morning, I came down for coffee and breakfast. I stepped into a freezing kitchen and found Susan warming her hands over the toaster. “Seriously,” she said, “I feel like Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘Little Match Girl’, scrabbling for whatever scrap of warmth I can find.”
I smiled at that image – until I took the time to read the story that I vaguely remembered from childhood. The Little Match Girl was found frozen to death.
By Barry Rueger
When I finally bought myself a lovely, red canoe in 1997, it was because I spent my youth, 30 years earlier, watching the many canoeing films by the National Film Board’s legendary Bill Mason.
