Sidewalks must be a priority

Even a few unshovelled properties on a city block makes it heavy going, especially for seniors, parents pushing strollers, and others with mobility challenges. Many are effectively trapped in their homes

There are, famously, about a dozen words in Inuktitut for snow in its various forms and locations. Among them, according to the Canadian Encyclopedia, are qanik, aputi, pukka, aniu.

In Toronto, there about as many terms these days for unshovelled, unplowed snow. Understandably, none of them are printable.

The past week has been a midwinter’s nightmare for anyone trying to get around on foot.

Even eight days after a blizzard that dumped more snow on the city in a day than it normally gets in all of January, wayfarers are stumbling, slogging, slipping, sliding, falling.

It’s astonishing, really, that with so much experience of winter, we often seem surprised and overmatched in Toronto by snow arriving in quantity.

It sometimes seems as if mankind put a man on the moon just so we could say at times like this, “If they can put a man on the moon, why can’t they clear the sidewalks?!”

To be sure, there remains a certain beauty around the city, sunlight glinting off still huge snowbanks under crystalline blue skies. It’s a welcome change from the grey, dismal stretches that often make up a Toronto winter.

And to be sure, the City of Toronto and employees are working hard on a monumental cleanup job.

Mayor John Tory tweeted this week that crews have removed 18,468 tonnes of snow and cleared 276 kilometres of roads.

For his troubles, and for failing to explain how cleared roads help pedestrians struggling along blocked, icy sidewalk, Tory was buried under storms of unhappy response.

Citizens posted photos of uncleared sidewalks and bike lanes all over the city and listed streets that were fit only for dog teams. The mayor was trying to clean up the mess on Tuesday, noting that the storm was one of the top five in Toronto’s history and insisting that roads aren’t taking priority over sidewalks. But, he went on, snowclearing equipment isn’t interchangeable and road machines can’t just be put to work on sidewalks.

The late Mel Lastman, former mayor of Toronto and before that North York, knew a thing or three about the priority citizens give to the prompt clearing sidewalks.

It’s that kind of snowboots-on-the-ground attention to basic services that populists like Premier Doug Ford and his late brother, former mayor Rob Ford, built political careers on.

True, much depends in responding to such deluges on the good citizenship of individuals.

There are basically two kinds of people in the world (or at least Toronto).

There are the fastidious souls who are out even before the snow stops falling, clearing a pathway so wide and glorious and pristine that it’s worth tossing rose petals on.

Then there are the minimalists, those who give their patch of sidewalk a desultory once over, clearing a path of just a shovel’s width through the drifts and considering the job done.

Most act properly. But even a few unshovelled properties on a city block makes it heavy going, especially for seniors, parents pushing strollers, and others with mobility challenges. Many are effectively trapped in their homes.

Outside abandoned storefronts, along the sides of parking areas, construction sites and schoolyards, sidewalks become a no-man’sland untouched by shovel or broom.

For his part, Coun. Josh Matlow acknowledged on Twitter the size of the challenge, but pointed out that “it’s now been a week and many local roads across our city haven’t been plowed and too many sidewalks are still impassable. That’s not good enough.”

He’s right.