The ballet of the snow plows

soooo... since I am constrained to stay at home with a sprained elbow from a fall, not while I was skating in the Old Port's Bonsecours Island skating rink, but while I was returning home; Such is how much de-icing is done in Montreal...

Did I mention that Montreal does not believe in salt - something about the environment or something... eh... They picked the environment over their people!!

I am still holding the mayor and the Ville Marie borough responsible (last year the city paid 0.5 million in compensation to people who slipped on ice... hmmm I can surely use some money...). But I do appreciate the snow plowers task really, for what the city is giving them, I think they do a splendid job.

And I can spend a whole day watching their carefully choreographed ballet.

First come these guys, pushing away the snow.

Then come these guys (there are two of them moving in exact synch), actually removing the snow.

Then these guys clearing more snow, including from the sidewalks.

More pushing snow...

And these tiny guys, who for some reason that I didn't quite get, always move around in pairs, come along and clean the sidewalk. These guys are very cute infact; they sit at the end of the sidewalk waiting for the big guys to go around and then immediately buzz in to action. Sort of like one of those "while the cat's away..." situations.

Several times this guy and another smaller sedan will follow the plows checking to see if the roads a drivable.


And this cycle repeats several times, drowning the whole night in that soothing hum only snow plows can make, lulling us all to sleep, while themselves staying up all night and making sure our tomorrows look fantastic like this :

Snow Removal/Clearing is often a thankless job... But really it is the bureaucracy that gets blamed, not these tireless snow plowers themselves. In any case I do find the whole process quite fascinating, but thought I'll keep my nerdy enthusiasm to myself, when one day one of my friends declared, it was her dream job to drive one of those tiny cute side walk snow plows... and her boyfriend loves watching them snow plows too... Is it any wonder that they are my best friends in Montreal?