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Snow fights continue, hot air causes rapid melting

January 6th, 2009 · 29 Comments

The raging debates over the snow and city responses to it continue. I’m finding it fascinating how much of the attention is focused on Vancouver, where the whole issue has turned into a debate along political party lines. I guess the snow in Surrey, Coquitlam, North Van and so on is truly non-partisan. I heard Janet Brown on CKNW yesterday talking about how bad the snow situation was on the streets out in Surrey, but somehow that hasn’t yet led to a call for the impeachment of Mayor Dianne Watts.

Anyway, you can read the latest from Gary Mason at the Globe and Michael Smyth at the Province here and here, with Michael commenting that Gregor was taking more heat here than during his vacation in Cancun. Gee, Suzanne Anton was in Mexico the same two weeks but on the opposite coast — how fitting.

As for me, I’ve decided this is all too silly to pay attention to. Instead, I went out to clear the drain on my street. I highly recommend it as a fun activity. It’s like building sand castles at the beach, where you try to dig little canals to get the water to fill up the moat. Only here, you have to dig little tunnels through the snow so that the slushy water accumulating in isolated little lakes here and there can make it through to the cleared drain.

(For those of you unfamiliar with your street geography, the drain is usually a letter-slot-shaped opening under the sidewalk, about the width of a snow shovel, usually at the lowest point of your street — the place where the lake forms on the street when the drain is blocked by leaves in the fall.)

So, all of you patriotic citizens, out to the barricades with your shovels.

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