It was a dark and stormy night.

Ha ha ha! Just kidding. It was a dark and stormy afternoon. As hard as this is to believe, it was almost the end of (bad word) May.

Throughout the kingdom, the people were royally bummed out, partly because the economy was spinning slowly into the toilet, partly because everyone was terrified of catching a really nasty flu from pigs, but mainly because their land had been bewitched.

Once upon a time -- as all good stories are supposed to begin -- their kingdom was a place of warm and beautiful springs, the kind of springs you only read about in stories that begin with the words "once upon a time."

But now there was a darkness upon the land and their dreams of backyard barbecues and digging in the garden and going to the beach and baking their pasty white skin were being snowed under by The Winter That Refused To End.

The people were sad. But mostly they were cranky. Big-time cranky. Fortunately, there was a hero in the land, a plucky newspaper columnist with an unruly mop of curly hair and steely blue eyes, a hero who vowed to find out who was to blame.

One day -- for the sake of this story, we'll call it Sunday -- our hero got off the couch and said to himself: "I do not care if it is overcast with light snow flurries clearing in the afternoon, for I am bravely going into my backyard to barbecue ribs."

And so he did. Venturing out into the cold, he fired up his grill, tossed on a meaty slab of ribs, then returned to his couch, where he bravely fell asleep.

A short time later, he was jolted awake by his wife, who was shouting the words heroes dread: "YOUR BARBECUE IS ON FIRE!"

And so it was. Thinking only of how much he loved ribs, our hero raced into the blustery yard, where, gasp, long tongues of flame shot angrily from the top of his beloved grill.

"This is not good," he muttered, thinking that if anyone reading his column had seen that documentary about the Hindenburg disaster on the History Channel they'd know what he was talking about. After first turning off the propane tank, the columnist, armed with two hockey sticks from his garage, plucked the flaming ribs off the grill and bravely flung them into his snowy garden.

"This really sucks," he griped, "The kingdom is under an evil spell. I must find out who is to blame."

Suddenly, he knew what to do. He went inside, picked up the phone and placed an important call.

"Hello," he said when a voice answered. "Are you a mysterious and powerful wizard who can rid the kingdom of the evil curse that has condemned us to perpetual winter?" "No," the voice replied. "I'm Dale Marciski, outreach officer for Environment Canada in Manitoba."

"Well, Dale," our hero said, "You will have to do. Tell me, do you have a complaints department?"

"No," Dale said, sadly. "I wish we did."

But the columnist pressed on. "Dale, are you to blame for The Winter That Refused To End?"

The weather expert laughed.

"There must be a much higher power than me who controls the weather," he said. "We don't have a big switch in the back room."

"OK," the columnist sniffed. "Then who is to blame???"

Dale pondered this.

"Well, cold weather comes from the north," he finally said. "It gets pulled down by whatever wind currents are blowing at the time. So if you don't like the cold, you have to look north. It's a big place.

"There's the Canadian Arctic, Alaska, Russia. We might even find Greenland has some issues. They send stuff our way sometimes." Our hero felt a chill go up his spine. "THE RUSSIANS!" he snorted. "I have no problem calling them if they are behind this. We have to blame SOMEONE!"

The weather wizard laughed a cold laugh. "There's a lot of areas this is coming from," he said, patiently. "We can't blame it on one particular location."

Then, just as hope began to fade, the weather guy had a brainstorm. "You know," he said, "the Earth isn't heated uniformly. It turns on its axis and different parts of the Earth are heated differently. It heats up at the equator and the poles don't get as much direct sunlight, even in the summer. So, really, it's the sun's fault!"

"THE SUN!" our hero shouted with delight. "Yes," Dale replied, "but I don't have a phone number for the sun."

But our hero didn't care. He went straight to his computer and pounded out a column in which he encouraged cranky readers to go outside and shake their fists at the sun in a menacing manner. And then he bravely curled up beside his barbecue, because, all things considered, it was still the warmest place in the land.