Snow, ice, roads, sidewalks, salt, shovels, sand. Probably not your favourite words. This happens every year. People complaining about snow, more specifically about snow on sidewalks. It’s the same old story. Worse than snow even, is ice! The deadliest of them all. The stuff that makes people fall, get hurt, break bones. It’s pretty deadly stuff, and it’s harder to get rid of, sometimes nearly impossible if you are looking at not damaging your pavement/cement.

In Medicine Hat, there is a bylaw in place to keep people shoveling the snow, or salting/breaking away the ice from sidewalks adjacent to their property. I was wondering about exactly what the bylaw says, and found it in on the Medicine Hat Police Service website. Supposedly, people have 24 hours to remove any snow/ice/dirt from their sidewalks. This is kind of weird considering it seems like an obscure measurable. If somebody complained to the bylaw officers, by the time they got there, it might have already been cleaned. What if somebody slips and falls but it was at the 22nd hour after it snowed, guess it wouldn’t count if they went and cleaned it up on the 23rd hour? Seems like there is some intrinsic flaws with this plan.

In reference to what I said earlier, about the salt damaging your cement/pavement – it’s true. De-icing salt will damage (sometimes permanently) your cement, not to mention the environment as well as your grass. What about using a ice chisel or metal shovel to remove ice – same issue really; you are going to be damaging the cement. There’s really no way around it, you have to do it. The damage doesn’t change the bylaw – which by the way can get you fined from $100, to $10,000 (most people don’t realize this). *EDIT* Dusty has just brought to my attention that damaging the sidewalks is also against a bylaw to damage streets or “contiguous” areas, meaning sidewalks (anything touching the street). Full quote from bylaw: “No one shall deface, damage, or write upon any structure which is on or contiguous to a street.” So because de-icers and ice chippers damage the sidewalk, is it still okay? This also brings up a funny point about children’s sidewalk chalk… which according to this point, it’s against a bylaw.

Wait a second… What about alleyway sidewalks, sidewalks/gaps in between properties, street crossings, sidewalks adjacent to city parks? These places are always normally always icey. I know this because I walk my dog over some every day (there’s a lot of this in new developing areas where some lots are not built/empty) – sometimes slipping or falling. Most of these are owned by the city? Would the city be safe from their own bylaw? The bylaw states:

The owner or occupant of any premises adjoining a sidewalk shall clear away any snow, ice, dirt or other obstruction from a sidewalk within twenty-four hours after the time such snow, ice, dirt or other obstruction was deposited or formed on the sidewalk.

Semantically, premises are considered any type of “land AND/OR building” and the “owner” means the city. So does that mean I can call up the city and have them removed within 24 hours? What if it isn’t removed within 24 hours, do they fine themselves? How does this work?

Blaming and complaining about individuals is fine and everything, so long as you are not lazy yourself and phone it in. But what about these other “ownerless” areas of ice… which in my opinion far out-weighs (at least in my area) the few lazy people that don’t shovel.
Bylaw No. 1556 PDF