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Pantless Snowplow Thief Who Crashed into the Bell Island Ferry Terminal Is a Hamfisted But Devastatingly Accurate Metaphor for Newfoundland in 2018

Some days the local police scanner is indistinguishable from a John Waters movie.
Image of pantless man who crashed into a bell island ferry terminal afters stealing a snow plow
Images via Wikipedia Commons / Shutterstock

The chilling kiss of winter has been visited on the Rock. It was such a warm autumn you could still delude yourself into the summer state of mind. Back-to-back windstorms—the most intense storm winds on the planet!—and a weekend of flurries put an end to foolishness. Our friend the Sun indeed is dead and won’t live again ‘til spring.

The prospect of another Newfoundland winter is enough to drive a man to madness. Presumably this is why a pantless man in a stolen snowplow led police on a late-night chase through Portugal Cove.

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Some scene. Buddy in the cab of the truck, naked knees knocking, straining to see through his breath and the frost and the awful noise of metal scraping asphalt all the way up Thorburn Road. Never has he felt more alive than in this denuded fever dream. Radio punched up on bust: this is power; this is freedom; this is God, here now in the cold air on his skin. Absolutely cannot stop just fucking laughing.

Somewhere past St. Philips, cops appear in the rearview mirror and our boy gets giddy with panic. His palms sweat as his bare legs tense against the frost. He rounds a bend and bombs down a wooded hill toward the lights of Bell Island, glowing softly in the dark above the whitecaps. Euphoria returns: a daring midnight escape aboard the Legionnaire. Florida Man’s Newfie cousin pulls a hard left toward the terminal, missing his mark and flipping the truck through some power lines. No one is injured, because no one who steals a truck in their underwear can be injured.

I can’t speak for anybody else, but personally I found this tale of petty crime and inexplicable nudity to be Extremely Relatable Content. Not so much the act itself, even though driving a snowplow into the sea while almost literally naked with fury sounds like a real cathartic experience. It’s more that every day of the public life of the province lately feels like “pantless man crashes stolen snowplow.” It expresses everything.

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Think about it. What is the Muskrat Falls Inquiry but the long, stunned silence of the police watching a half-naked man crawl away unharmed from a spectacular accident? The project was always pantless but everyone involved wanted to make the slick getaway so no one asked any questions. Haranguing about harassment in the House would also fit the bill—it’s MHA Eddie Joyce climbing up from the wreckage, cursing to the heavens, ripping off his shirt and tie to better brawl with cops. He’s screaming something about protecting the premier? Weird!

Here’s one we’re still only partway through. The largest offshore oil spill in provincial history happened last Friday at SeaRose when production restarted amid ongoing rough seas—so rough the magnitude of the spill has yet to be fully measured—but industry isn’t taking questions. This would also explain why provincial politicians aren’t saying much about it either, which is a far cry from their enthusiasm for doubling oil production by 2030 or opening up marine protected areas for drilling.

We’re probably about halfway through the eternally recurring Pantless Man Crashes Stolen Snowplow cycle of Newfoundland history: the giddy euphoria of the perfect crime sinking into terror as reality intrudes. The crash I would expect comes later, when industry tries to cut hard into a climatological cul-de-sac looking for a ferry that doesn’t run, only to flip the truck into some power lines instead. When we learn then that the Emperor wears no clothes—or at least no pants—we’ll have little to show for it is a single smashed basket of eggs and billions in stranded assets. Then again, maybe some of the generous $153 million grant to the “ocean supercluster” can go towards solving those problems.

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Sorry. I’m trying to be less negative, which I realize is in direct conflict with my chosen career and place of residence. It’s just hard to adapt to the seasonal change, you know. It’s a challenge to look on the bright side when you’re getting less than 8 hours of sunlight a day and all the plants are dead and sweet fuck it’s not even December.

It’s enough to make you crazy. Just don’t forget your long johns if you’re going for a joyride in the cold.

Follow Drew Brown on Twitter.

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