Slip sliding away…

Winter has barely arrived and our two minor (at least, by Montreal standards) snowstorms have already managed to bring us to our knees. Last week's paltry ten centimetres during morning rush hour turned the Champlain Bridge into a massive parking lot for two hours. In the past few weeks, traffic due to bad road conditions has been so bad, that I've taken to bringing a book with me in my car. I kid you not! I actually placed my car on "park" for a good 20 minutes, while waiting for them to re-open Victoria Bridge during afternoon rush hour a few weeks ago. The way things are looking on the roads, I am going to start carrying my weather-beaten copy of "War and Peace" in the car and revisit that old classic. I'm sure I'll be done with it by mid January.

And in case some of you start shaking your head, tsk' tsk'ing me for living on the Shore and give me the 'why don't you live on the island and avoid bridges' speech, I have news for you naïve people. Some mornings, it takes me longer to get from the corner of Decarie to Victoria Avenue in Westmount (where The Monitor's offices are located) than it does for me to get from St. Lambert to NDG! Ha! Winter mayhem is an equal opportunity disruptor for us all.

Listen… I know we're not as winter-savvy as we used to be. Years of global warming and heated indoor garages have made us soft and so we could afford to smugly shake our heads in the general direction of the 401 and laugh at our Torontonian friends who would call in the army at the mere sight of snowflakes falling on Yonge Street. But, oh how times have changed! This city's administration has taken snow removal to such pitiful lows that we're slipping and sliding everywhere we go.

Old people are falling down and breaking hips and wrists on Montreal's treacherous sidewalks and, forgive me for asking, but is salt now a prized commodity? Has it become the new saffron? Does Tremblay know something we don't? Is he stockpiling it at City Hall, hoping it increases in value? What else could explain why none of it can be found on our sidewalks, doing what it's supposed to be doing? One could easily stage an entire Disney on Ice Show on our sidewalks these days, while many Montrealers have resorted to wearing crampons on their boots to better weather the walk outdoors. Are you kidding me? Crampons? Is it too much to expect that I can reasonably walk to my local dep or pharmacy without wearing the kind of footwear one usually wears while attempting to scale Mt. Denali during a blizzard?

What's so unreasonable about expecting that my tax dollars go towards efficient and prompt snow removal and not towards press releases explaining why the city – once again-- got caught with its pants down and, oh my God, how did this happen? We just turned around for a second and… pow! This white stuff came out of nowhere, I tell you, and just blanketed the city.

About the only thing that's running like clockwork these days are Marcel Tremblay's lame excuses, as he outlines all the reasons why things are not running the way that they should.