[LINK] "How #stormchips became a Maritime phenomenon"

[rfmcdonald]

Adrian Lee of MacLean's describes the Maritime Canadian tradition of stormchips.

New York may not have been slammed by snow as predicted, but the eastern seaboard, including the Maritimes, was hit by heavy gusts, and more than 30 cm of snow in some areas. For Atlantic Canada, though, these tough wintry times have only one balm: #stormchips, a year-old hashtag for Haligonians to fete the snacks they’ve stocked up on. As Tuesday’s storm approached, the tag began to trend nationally yet again, and East Coast businesses and political parties took up the stormchip cause. It all started with Stephanie Domet, who hosts the Mainstreet Halifax program at CBC Radio One. Domet spoke to Maclean’s about how it all started, her personal #stormchip rules, why stormchips feel quintessentially Maritime, and what it’s like to have all this (strange) power.

So how did it begin?

We here in Nova Scotia went through quite a period last year of winter storms all the time, it felt like, for weeks and weeks and weeks. And it seemed like, last January, that every time the forecast was for stormy weather, I got the urge to get chips. I love chips. My total kryptonite is plain ripple chips—but we never have them in the house, probably because I love them too much. So they’re a super treat-thing for me, and I realized that every time there was a storm I got this incredible urge to get chips. So this one morning I go to my husband and say, “It’s going to really snow tomorrow, we should get some chips tonight.” And then in an off-the-cuff conversation, live conversation on the show that I host, I was talking with our news reader Ryan Pierce and he talked about the storm, and I said that the only thing on my grocery list to stock up for the storm is chips and dip, and he admitted that it was a similar conversation they were having at his place, what snacks to get before the storm. Maybe we talked about it a little more on the show before we were off air, and then I went to the grocery store and I got my ripple chips and dip, and took a photo of it, and tweeted, “Success! #stormchips.” The rest, as they say, is history, I guess. (Laughs)

So why do you think this blew up? There’s a feeling, for me, that the #stormchips phenomenon is kind of this essentially Maritimey thing.

The only thing I can think about it was that this was a thing that everyone was always doing, and that I just happened to tap into the zeitgeist and that’s why it resonated. I don’t know if it’s a particularly Maritimey thing. Maybe we take storms more seriously here because of the ocean? I don’t know!