How beautiful, a nice big snowfall. How magical. Romantic. Magic. Is not it? Except – sorry to break the dream – for the poor pedestrians in Montreal.
Yes, Montreal. The mythical metropolis where the sidewalks are rarely deglazed while the bike paths are cleared at lightning speed.
However, when the sidewalks are little or badly deiced, it is the festival of falls, fractures, strains, torn ligaments, broken hips, etc. Hello already overwhelmed emergencies, loss of income from work, surgeries and physio to get patched, etc.
For several years, regardless of the mayor of the City or of the boroughs, it’s been the same ritual. We are told that in winter, let’s see, it’s “normal” for there to be ice!
Sidewalks and bike paths are not the same. That we don’t plow them the same way, That if we’re dissatisfied, we call 311. Good luck once the ice is set on a sidewalk…
Every winter I write about it. Yet another cry in an icy desert. As usual, I’ll be getting a ton of not polar, but polarized messages.
bird names
On the one hand, I will be told “well done, we are going through the same thing”. On the other, people will throw names at me because I will have dared to compare the risky state of the non-deglazed sidewalks to the always clear cycle paths.
As usual, I will be accused of being “anti-cyclist” when the demand is simple: that pedestrians have sidewalks in winter that are as safe as cycle paths. No more no less.
As usual, I will be told to “put on crampons”. Isn’t that what the grotesque Marcel Tremblay already told us in 2009 – then “responsible for snow removal” at the City and brother of Mayor Gérald Tremblay? Category: it can’t be invented…
What about vulnerable, disabled, elderly people who have to prevent themselves from going out so as not to risk falling on a slippery sidewalk?
Well no. In a metropolis, none of this is “normal”. Tuesday, in an editorial, my colleague Nathalie Collard from The Press also noted that there had been a “big saving in abrasives this weekend in Montreal”.
Upstream
Seeing also that the safe way to walk is indeed to take the cycle paths, she noticed that there was “not the shadow of a pebble, a grain of sand or salt on the sidewalks of many boroughs, including downtown.
However, when one has lived long enough in Montreal, one nevertheless remembers a time, now distant, when the sidewalks were cleared. The same time, look, when doctors were still making house calls…
These days, many of us denounce the deficient safety for pedestrians because of the delinquent behavior of certain motorists. In Montreal, sidewalks with no or poor deicing should be added to the long list of risks posed to pedestrian safety.
And please, to paraphrase a famous minister, let us go with 311. We can call his nice agents with the patience of an angel.
But isn’t it up to the City and the boroughs to do their job upstream instead of waiting for us to call them to report slippery sidewalks or because we broke our margoulette on a patch of ice? ?