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Winter Peeve: Lazy Snow Shovellers
With this morning’s surprise snowfall, Toronto pedestrians are once again relegated to nimbly navigating slush-covered sidewalks—an unpredictible process that leaves us carefully weaving through each other like mountain goats passing on a cliff.
What really gets our goad, however, is one of winter’s notorious peeves: the lazy sidewalk shoveler. Mandated by the City to clear the sidewalk within twelve hours of a snowfall lest they face a $105 fine, the lazy shoveler quickly does the minimum amount of work, leaving a single shovel-width of clear space that gets filled back in with slush within mere moments as pedestrians step around each other in single file. If the weather remains cold, this teeny trail turns into a knobby, hard-pack terrain of bonded ice, immune to future shovel blades.
Of course, there are also those homeowners and store proprietors who are apparently expert property surveyors, stopping their work with laser-accurate precision right at the property line, even if there is only a half-metre strip of snow left by a neighbour that might be removed with a single push of the spade.
It was frustrating this morning observing senior citizens, a blind person, a mother pushing a stroller, and someone in a wheelchair trying to maneuver their way around our city sidewalks. The sad irony is how the lazy shovelers seem to have no problem keeping their driveways clear.