Montreal Snowbanks, circa 1910.
In Flo in the City, by book in progress about the 1910 era, based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/ I have Marion Nicholson, my husband’s grandmother, fall into a snowbank on her way to work. She had to take 3 streetcars, not easy in summer, but in winter, wearing a sensible shirtwaist suit and those tightly-laced ‘granny boots.’ Well. They plowed the snow those days with special streetcars, and cleared the sidewalks with plain old fashioned shovel power. And they rolled the snow on the streets for the horse-drawn sleighs, which were fast and deadly, that’s why they had to be equipped with bells to warn pedestrians of their approach. In the city, the sound of sleighbells was ominous, not joyful.
I’m just reading a piece by Josh Freed in the Montreal Gazette. It was written on the 15th of January and he writes about how everyone else in the world is getting snow, but not us, in Montreal, the snowfall (and snowplough) capital of the world.
And sure enough, today, the 27th, we missed yet another one. We had little flurries yesterday but DC and Philly and New York and Boston had a big storm.
We wouldn’t know, except that my husband, right now, is watching WCVB and they are describing a roof collapse in Lynn (where some of the Watters lived in 1910). Two people were injured.
Well, I must admit, I’m thrilled not to get a lot of snow again this year. Two and three years ago we had immense, near record snowfalls and my husband had to clear off the roof a few times and so I was walled into my living room by giant icebanks on the sun deprived side of my house until April. Very disheartening.
Last winter next to nothing fell in the way of snow. And this year, the same weather pattern (touch wood) seems to have settled in. The storms track East of the Appalacians and then fall on the US North East and our Maritime Provinces.
I must admit, I am happy when Philadelphia gets snow, but I’m not being smug or callous. It’s just that a nephew of ours lives down there. He’s a building contractor, and with the deep deep DEEP recession he is having trouble getting jobs, but as a good former Canadian he decided, this year, to invest in snow clearing machinery.
We have so little snow, here in the burbs of Montreal, that the gates on the driveway can remain in place, saving me chasing my dogs down the street.Normally, that lamp post at the road is barely visible.
I wonder if the City of Brotherly Love has got more snow than us, the City of Stanley Cup Riots, this year. It might be so. Oh, and I also wonder if DC has gotten more snow that Ottawa? Wouldn’t that be amusing.
But as I wrote, touch wood. In Montreal, we tend to get our biggest snowfalls in March. (Most Montreal Boomers have family photos of that infamous record 1971 snowfall. At least my husband and I both do. I am standing on the porch, 16, tall and VERRRY skinny, in small shorts, (the next day was warmish) holding my sausage dog, Oscar Mayer under my arm, probably watching my poor old Dad shovel us out.
My husband is also standing on his porch in another Montreal burb beside a friend surrounded by big banks of snow. (He tells me his neighbour helicoptered home the night before.) It’s a real Mutt and Jeff snapshot, this one, as my future husband is 14, and about 5 foot nothing tall and his friend is about 6 foot. I am still a lot taller than my husband, but had I stood beside him in 1971, it would have looked more odd, as I was at my full 5 foot 10 height.
No I am not gloating. And besides, as a snow city, many of our businesses count on good winter snowfall. And so does our ecology. They call winters like last year ‘a snow drought.’
And, you know, we had that horrible week-long ice storm in 1998. So we know how bizarre weather patterns can wreak havoc and make you suffer.
