Calling in the military? Now the joke’s on us

January 2020 will go down in history as the time the city of St. John’s came to a standstill, no tsunami, no earthquake, just a good old dumping of snow.

The mayor of St. John’s, Danny Breen, called a state of emergency, with most people not allowed on the streets in their vehicles for eight days.

Although 50,000-plus workers were sent home, our premier phoned Ottawa and asked for the military to come to St. John’s and bring their shovels, as people couldn’t get out of their houses.

In Conception Bay South, where I am for the winter, we had a state of emergency for three days. After that things were back to normal, people went back to work.

On Jan. 21, I left C.B.S. in the morning to drive 560 kilometres to attend my friend’s funeral. If I had been in St. John’s I would not have been allowed, although the road report called for wet and slushy conditions on the Trans-canada Highway, I had dry pavement all the way — a normal winter day; I never saw a plow on the road, and there was no need.

I have lived in this province for a long time and have seen lots of snow storms, some years worst then others. But through it all we learnt how to deal with it, and never saw a time we were not allowed to go to the stores.

If we couldn’t drive, we walked. Why were the corner stores forced to close when most people were within walking distance?

With all the road contractors on the Avalon Peninsula, there are hundreds of trucks and loaders parked in their yards because of no work, and skilled workers are home doing nothing. Why weren’t these professional people put to work?

This letter is not intended to criticize the City of St. John’s or Mayor Breen or Premier Dwight Ball, who got 10 days of publicity money couldn’t buy. The voters who gave them their jobs will decide. The other mayors, in C.B.S., Paradise and Mount Pearl, who did a professional job of getting their towns back to normal in record time, got very little praise.

The rest of the province is quite capable of dealing with a snowstorm, as has been proven the last few days.

By calling in the Armed Forces, Premier Ball has created another Newfie joke and has proven once again that he is not a leader. A lot of the skyscrapers in New York were built by Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, yet we had to get the mainlanders in to shovel our snow. Oh, the shame of it all!

As Mark Critch accurately stated, we can no longer make jokes about Toronto.

Well, at least the people outside of St. John’s can still hold their head high.