Go underground?

We had a potluck Christmas lunch at work today. I hadn't any time to prepare anything, not that I could think of what I could cook or prepare anyway. So when the organiser came around the office looking to get the final list of who was bringing what, I told her to simply let me know what was not covered by everyone else, and I'd fill in, be it appetizer, entrée, dessert, or miscellaneous. I ended up needing to supply cutlery.

So, in my typical last-minute fashion, I headed out of the office to the nearby Zellers to pick them up. At 10:30 this morning, with the windchill, it was about 19 Kelvin outside, I think. Luckily, there's a mall between my building and Zellers. So I hustled across the street, through the mall, across the street, and inside the Zellers (repeat in reverse, returning with cutlery).

The whole thing all that is leading up to is the fact that we have no underground infrastructure to speak of in Ottawa. Toronto has the PATH system and Montréal has the La Ville Souterraine. I'm afraid I don't know if anything substantial exists in the rest of Canada, but I'm surprised they're not more prevalent. I would think that as our ancestors built up our cities, it would have occurred to many of them that close to 353 days of the year it's bloody damn cold, and it might be convenient to get about the city without subjecting oneself to the elements. And yet it never happened. (Well ... there are rumours of service tunnels connecting the east block and centre block of Parliament Hill, and Carleton University has a pretty extensive system of tunnels under their campus.) This just doesn't make sense to me - I can't imagine our forebears running around in the cold, and it not occurring to them that if "here" and "there" were connected underground, then they would only have to get to and from their downtown office, then spend the rest of the day blissfully ignoring the icy weather. I have to say, I'm highly disappointed that their lack of foresight hasn't provided me a tunnel network in which I might hide from winter.