If shovelling is losing favour in the suburban Canadian landscape, it is not because we are getting less snow (see above pic of my laneway). 

Shovelling simply takes time we don’t have and it can be too easily avoided for the price of yesterday’s Netflix membership.

So why do some continue to do it?

Of what mettle are shovelers made?

To answer, we need some context –

The morning after a big snowfall, you open the door and snow falls into the house. It’s white as far as you can see with a single set of tire tracks on the street. The branches of the Lindens and Cherry trees look like inside-out chocolate eclairs. You are hit with a sense of warmth, comfort and insulation brought about by the partly holiday-induced impression that the entire neighbourhood has been cloistered in a snow globe.

The neighbours likewise crane their necks out. There’s a moment shortly before the sounds of scraping shovels, snowblowers and spinning tires where everyone contemplates calling in sick, brewing a pile of coffee and throwing on grandma’s knitted sweater.

But duty calls. 

You throw on a coat, tuque and gloves. Tuck your pant cuffs over your boots and trudge out with that shovel with the plastic end that keeps falling off, the one you keep forgetting to drill back on to the wooden shaft every year, and you just stand there at first, taking it all in.

The truth is, winter in Canada, when it’s like this, is majestic. No matter your neighbourhood, no matter how rural or city the mouse, the scene is breathtaking. A big snowfall is the great equalizer, levelling the aesthetic playing field. And you feel almost guilty as you stand there, hand perched on your shovel, knowing you’re about to carve it up.

On the other hand, there’s something cathartic about clearing a laneway, not just a ‘man vs. nature’ thing but a ‘man with nature’ experience that is restorative and good. And so –

You start by shovelling the walkway. The roof of the car. Its sides. Out front of each of the four wheels. You do a slapdash job on the lower half of the laneway and run back in to get the keys. You pull the car out and park, flashers on, and trudge back across the snowy terrain to attend to the rest of the business of the laneway.

You do your best to bend at the knees, to ‘perform’ a squat that won’t kill your lower back, to deadlift with your chin up, ears lined up with shoulders lined up with hips but the physics are not in your favour – there’s no fulcrum but the gripping hand at the end of an extended arm and the strain on your lower back is unavoidable.  

As you work, the snowbank grows, the toque itches, your back protests and you are sweating under layers of goose-down but the work feels good. Your heart pounds. Snowflakes fall onto your nose. You’re in rhythm, stepping into every stroke, and bit by bit, you clear it.

You tuck your car back into the laneway like a letter in an envelope, step out, push your toque up and watch your breath evaporate into the cold. Shovelling on days like this is a Sisyphean task and instead of putting the shovel back in the garage, you lean it against the brick knowingly as you head inside for coffee and a big breakfast –

But as the front door shuts behind you and you lean over to undo your snow-caked laces, you hear spinning tires. You shelf the coffee and breakfast, head back out, and sure enough, there they are: new mom, old Mazda, stuck at the end of the laneway three doors down.

As the balance of the morning unfolds there are five or six of you. A mixed bag of adults, young and old. You work for nearly two hours shovelling this one out of her laneway, that one out from the end of the street. There’s no formal greeting. Just a nod and the scraping of shovels as you labour in that special silence born from shared work.

You retire finally – back to your own crammed-in-amongst-townhomes townhouse, the laneway of which has already thickened again with a fresh layer of snow. You javelin your shovel into the bank, head in, throw on the coffee, some clean clothes, and in a matter of minutes, you’re out the door on the way to work.

Will you eventually hire a snow removal service? 

Maybe next year (you said that last year).

Are you pissed about missing breakfast?

Nah. Breakfast, you can do anytime. The shovelling? That’s one of those challenges that life throws at you when you’re feeling down, had a tough week, when news of your uncle’s passing – the one who liked chocolate eclairs, finally hits you.

At the end of a week like that, shovelling snow should be an inconvenience.

But that’s a matter of perception. The facts are you are relatively young, healthy, and if you pay attention, you’ll recognize that there is something up for grabs in every snowfall – a feeling of accomplishment that accompanies such a straightforward task as the act of shovelling one’s laneway, the same one that accompanies any job where the start and finish are clear, and when the job is done well.

My uncle knew it.

He build things. Made things. Worked with his hands, and all this aside from his work as a peacekeeper.

And as I think on the many projects he would have undertaken over the course of his lifetime, I wonder about those projects, in the end, which, on account of his condition, he would not have managed to finish, let alone start.

And I wonder, what becomes of a man who can’t remove his own snow?

The same fate that befalls us all.

He relies on others. 

So I shovel because I can. Until I too find myself one day spinning my tires in the laneway. Until I too need help.

Or until the cold finds me one morning lying on my half shovelled laneway, observing the whipped cream branches above amid scraping of shovels and the neighbours’ footsteps as they come to my aid –

And as I think to myself –

I was no peacekeeper but I shovelled my neighbour’s laneway when I could.

And that that this, hopefully, was enough.

JM.