However, while Montreal's snow-clearing operations seem to be looking up for once -with most side streets looking fairly clean after a few days and main streets being tackled immediately the day of a storm- the city's main man when it comes to snow clearing, Marcel Tremblay, continues to draw needless attention to himself and the city's countless "snow-pas" by insisting on rambling on about how patience is required and providing us with the statistical data to mock him.
According to Tremblay, "if you add up the 4,100 kilometres of streets and 6,500 kilometres of sidewalks, the 10,600 kilometres is about the distance from Montreal to Beijing." That's good to know. Now, if you add up all the excuses coming from the bureaucrat probably voted as the one Montrealers most love to hate (it might be a toss-up between him and his brother), you would probably have a direct line of apologies, explanations, justifications, evasions and defenses reaching all the way to Siberia and back. Which, by the way, is where many Montrealers would probably want to send Marcel, every time he makes an appearance in his favourite fur-lined hat, attending those silly press conferences and making those silly excuses.
It's ironic that a man who is actually rumoured to be extremely likeable in person has the thankless job of having to constantly deflect responsibility about inadequate or substandard operations in such a way that no one probably believes anything he has to say anymore.
He's the anti-Peter who cried Wolf. While Peter constantly misled villagers into believing that he was being attacked by a wolf, until, finally, no one believed him anymore, Marcel has been sugar-coating Montreal's snow-removal efforts and exaggerating their efficiency to such an overblown extent that –even when it is adequate, we find ourselves looking around for something that went wrong or waiting for the next thing he's going to say that will make us shake our head in bewilderment. Crampons, anyone?
If you add up all the excuses…
If you add up all the excuses…
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Published on
January 13, 2009
- Published on February 6, 2010
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Toula Foscolos
So the first major snowstorm of the year hit Montreal this past Wednesday and, by all accounts, the city's snow-clearing crews seem to have successfully managed to remove most of it without too many mistakes or delays. Very few complaints have made their way to The Monitor's inbox and that's always a good sign.
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