Monday, January 12, 2009

10 years of laughing

Probably continue for another 90, until there's no snow anywhere anymore:
As Environment Canada predicts more snow this week and temperatures plunging to -22C, Mel Lastman is warmly recalling his decision 10 years ago to call in the military to fight a snowstorm.

It was January 1999, with the city buried under a metre of snow, when the then-mayor delighted the rest of the country by drafting Canadian soldiers to battle drifts and liberate buried bus shelters.

1 comment:

celestialspeedster said...

The rest of Canada is always looking for an excuse to laugh at Toronto but the fact is that few of them inhabit a city as densely populated and reliant on public transit as Toronto. When 118 cm of snow fell on Toronto in January 1999, the municipal workers could not cope and the mobility of emergency vehicles was severely hindered. If even a single death had resulted from the failure of an emergency vehicle to arrive on time, the good laugh that critics currently enjoy would be inappropriate. I have not heard any serious suggestions on what Toronto could have done under the circumstances, other than call in for some effective help, like the army.