Only when the ice breaks will you truly know who is your friend.
“Only when the ice breaks will you truly know who is your friend.”
True friendship is proven in moments of real hardship and danger, not in easy times.
— Traditional Canada Wisdom, Canada
Source: Widely circulated in popular Inuit proverb collections; precise community and original-language source are undocumented.
More Proverbs from Canada
Keep your stick on the ice.
Stay alert, stay ready, and keep doing the right thing even when nothing is happening.
Traditional Canada Wisdom
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Tie up your toque!
Brace yourself — things are about to get intense or exciting.
Traditional Canada Wisdom
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To speak through one's hat.
To talk about something you know nothing about, or to speak nonsense.
Traditional Canada Wisdom
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To have a fir tree slipped to you.
To be cheated or swindled in a deal.
Traditional Canada Wisdom
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Only when the last tree has been cut down, the last fish caught, and the last river poisoned, will we realize we cannot eat money.
Material wealth is worthless if we destroy the natural world that sustains us.
Traditional Canada Wisdom
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It's cold out.
An emphatic Québécois way of saying it is bitterly, painfully cold.
Traditional Canada Wisdom
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