I was on Oakwood tobogganing my six-year-old to school. There was plenty of hard snow on the sidewalk. But when we came up to two feet of ice on a long patch of sidewalk, we had to portage like the voyageurs. An elderly man waiting for the bus shook his head as we struggled passed him and said “No clean the snow” with a thick accent.
The man must have been 80 years-old. To him, clearing the sidewalk is a duty. Most homeowners in the city feel the same. Every neighbour who could, cleared their ice. The City was the only inconsiderate neighbour that made things worse.
The half meter of light snow that fell wasn’t the problem. It was City plows that piled the heaviest ice and slush in front of driveways, that blocked sidewalks and intersections, that nearly gave us all a heart attack. I had to clean all that up when I had already run out of energy after clearing a ton of snow. If you’re not going to help, don’t make it worse.
The first people I saw complain about the City’s snow clearing were our own City Councillors. I thought that was kind of funny because normally we’d be holding them responsible. Then Mayor Chow said, “At least I didn’t call the army.”
When cars have to stop in the middle of the street to drop off their kids at school because the sidewalks are blocked by mountains of snow, some extra help might not be a bad thing.
Toronto is dealing with major climate events. Forest fire ash. Flooding. And now Arctic snows. It’s no longer business as usual. Some things must change. And snow clearing is one of them.
Montreal focuses on snow pick up, rather than snow plowing. And a lot of their snow removal service is in-house, done by city workers and city machinery. Let’s find out how they do it and get some of that know-how here.
Torontonians are hardy. We all pitched in to clean up. Now it’s time for the City to do better. Because you can only put up with an inconsiderate neighbour for so long.
