Kelly Cormier’s work day started earlier than usual on Monday. Instead of brewing coffee or prepping the Ardmore Tea Room’s kitchen for the usual morning rush of patrons hungry for hash browns and scrambled eggs, the Quinpool Road diner’s co-owner was out shovelling snow so she could open on schedule at 8am. There was plenty to shovel: Environment Canada’s forecast called for 15 to 20 centimetres of snowfall across much of Nova Scotia (including Halifax) between Sunday evening and Monday afternoon. It was enough to issue a snowfall warning and cancel schools and offices across the Halifax Regional Centre for Education, as well as Dalhousie University, NSCC and Saint Mary’s University. The snow also pushed back Monday’s public skating hours at the Oval from the morning to early afternoon, postponed Monday’s curbside waste collection until the weekend and left at least one Coast reporter with two centimetres of snow and ice hanging from his beard. (Though, admittedly, the last bit was kind of fun.)
Monday’s snowstorm might have prompted many Haligonians—Cormier included—to search for their shovels, but the sidewalks weren’t cleared in equal measure across the peninsula. While Barrington Street and Spring Garden Road were mostly cleared by mid-Monday morning, Quinpool Road’s sidewalks had yet to see a snowplow by 10:15am—leaving some Haligonians who walk to work, or to the bank, or to grocery stores, or to health appointments, to trudge through snowbanks as high as two and a half feet to reach their destination. (The municipality is responsible for clearing all public sidewalks in the HRM.)
If you’re wondering where #Halifax’s priorities lie re: roads and sidewalks, this was Quinpool Road at around ~10:15am today. pic.twitter.com/mxYvcu1B2N
— Martin Bauman (HELL OF A RIDE out Mar. 15, 2024) (@martin_bauman) January 29, 2024
Cormier doesn’t necessarily mind the shovelling, but would prefer if her walk to work was less treacherous.
“I don’t know why they couldn’t have come sooner,” Cormier tells The Coast. “We all knew the snow was coming.”
