My day was already a bit unusual because I planned to file some paperwork at a government office downtown this morning, then go to the office later. The weather was bad:
http://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/sliding-nowhere-fast-montreals-weather-cocktail-packs-a-morning-after-punch
I had trouble on the sidewalk immediately outside my apartment building in NDG, a working-class suburb near downtown. I decided to stick with my plan, and took the bus to the metro, then the metro downtown. The streets downtown were cleared perfectly, and the sidewalks were also clear and well-salted, I could not have asked for better maintenance.
The city streets felt empty, as on a statutory holiday, perhaps because the schools were all closed for the day due to the predicted ice.
After my appointment, I took the metro and bus to work in Saint-Laurent, in an ugly but lucrative industrial park near the airport. The main road, Cote de Liesse, was cleared, as one would expect for a major expressway near the airport, with dozens of hotels offering shuttle buses to the airport, and a gazillion truck loading bays. The sidewalks, however, simply did not exist — they were filled with the snow blown by the machine that cleared the road. Between walking on the road (scary – cars going fast) and crunching through the snowbank, it was still better than the icy sheets covering the sidewalks of NDG this morning.