As you know we had a hefty amount of snow fall over the last few days, and as you know this also comes with the mundane task of shovelling the driveway. On the morning of Feb.2 I went out to shovel the hard, packed, wind drifted snow from the night before, cleared it and went on with my day. During the remainder of the day it continued to snow, and upon my return that evening I cleared the large amount of (thankfully!!) light, fluffy snow. Around 11pm that evening the “dreaded” snowplow came along and took all of the fresh snow, as well as the heavy, compacted snow that residents have driven on and put it ALL on our driveways. This morning I went out to see what I was up against and I was completely floored to see an entire FOOT of chunky, compacted snow in my driveway, including a 2×2 boulder!! It took me over an hour to clear all of it (including chipping at the boulder with an ice axe just to break it down enough that I could even move it). As I was doing this I took a moment to look around at all of my neighbours tirelessly labouring to clear their respective driveways (most of my neighbourhood is predominately new families and semi to full retirees). Needless to say I became pretty pissed off and it prompted me to do some research and compose this email:
In 2004 the National Institute of Health released a report regarding snow shovelling, “An inch of snowfall coupled with freezing temperatures causes death rates from heart attacks to TRIPLE among men aged 35-49 from snow shovelling. Men aged 55 or older are FOUR times as likely to experience heart problems while shovelling snow.
On Feb.2, 2011 CTV reported that an 80 year old Hamilton man died of a heart attack while shovelling his driveway. 7 people in the Hamilton area alone were admitted or taken to hosspitals with cardiovascular problems related to shovelling snow.
These small amounts of information should, like me, scare you. The City of Guelph, for whom you represent should not be complicit in alowing this to continue. I emplore you to look at other avenues to come up with a solution to this problem. A perfect example would be grating the roads less to be able to pay for a bobcat and a loading truck to clear all driveways, or use the bobcat to dump the snow on lawns. This is not without precedent, I used to live in Saskatoon, SK and this is exactly what was done. The city, (prior to the boom in 2007) was not alot bigger than Guelph and the city along with the province itself was virtually bankrupt.
I know that there are more complications and red tape involved that I am not aware of to try to make something like this happen but it is imperative that something be done. The people of your ward should not have to risk injury or death to clear snow that the city put there in the fist place. If need be I will canvass your entire ward to get people to sign petitions and send you emails if this issue is not resolved.AM