We’re in Calgary for the holidays. Our trip on Monday was not without incident: the flight itself was fine, but our plane left Ottawa four hours late and we spent nearly an hour on the tarmac in Calgary before we could get to a gate. It turns out we got off easy: people trying to get to and from the Maritimes, for example, had a much worse time of it. Once I saw hundreds of people on the floor at the departure gates in Calgary at nearly two in the morning, I realized that this was bigger than our little flight. Neither Ottawa nor Calgary was directly impacted by the weather, but virtually every plane was delayed by weather elsewhere, as the entire system backed up. We were lucky, all things considered. At least we got where we were going.