There are three kinds people in Calgary: those who shovel their sidewalks before they go to work, those who shovel when they get home from work and those who pray for chinooks. We call the first two good neighbours.
Next to these folks we have another group of people who move snow for a living. I say move because they rarely use shovels. Generally speaking, they have blowers or pushers or Bobcats of one kind or another.
These are the professionals. They are subcontractors who remove snow from private property. They are the institutional employees who clean our sidewalks, bus stops, schools and community associations.
Common among our citizen snow shovelers is an ethical system of winter neighbourliness with one central principle: he who shovels first shovels most. In other words, the first person on the scene shovels not only his bit, but a bit of his neighbour's bit as well.
It is not always fair, of course. Those who shovel before they go to work probably do the lion's share of this winter work. Nevertheless it is a good system. The entire community benefits from it and those who shovel first are good neighbours generous enough in spirit to know it.
Kids who walk to school in heavy boots with scarves over their faces and packs on their backs benefit from it. So do mothers struggling through snowdrifts with baby strollers. So do seniors and the disabled for whom ice can have deadly consequences.
At the professional level, meanwhile, a similar ethic of winter neighbourliness is also prevalent. The scale is different, of course, but the central principle remains -- he who shovels first shovels most. That's the way it is; that's the way it has always been.
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Or maybe I should say that's the way it was. That's the way it used to be in Calgary. Because in these days of miserly accountability, this age-old ethic is becoming a ghostly memory of winters past.
You see, these days our boards of education are too cash-strapped to be generous of sprit. So is the city. Neither the parks department nor the roads department have enough money in their snow removal budgets to keep this community ethic alive.
The City of Calgary, in fact, is running a deficit on the snow removal side of things. They are already a million dollars over budget this year and we still have some heavy weeks of winter weather ahead. As a result, everyone loses.
Here's an example. There is a two block stretch of sidewalk in southwest Calgary that is unbroken by intersecting roads. The responsibility for maintaining it is shared by a condo association, a board of education, two different city departments and a community association.
In the past, the invisible hand of winter neighbourliness was all that was needed to keep this important stretch of sidewalk clean. If the condo guy was out first, he did his bit and some of the community association's bit. If a community association guy was first on the scene, he did his bit, part of the condo's bit, part of the school's bit and then took an extra couple of minutes to remove the snow from around the bus stop.
In exchange, the city employee whose job it was to keep the bus stop snow free would run his bobcat down the entire length of the sidewalk from the school to the condo association whenever ice buildup made the area slippery.
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It was a good system. Everybody derived some benefits from it. Those who used it had a clean sidewalk to walk on. Those responsible for cleaning it often found the spot clean when they got there.
Recently, however, the system collapsed and a formerly clean sidewalk became a slippery slide-walk -- impassible to kids, impossible for baby strollers and impenetrable to canes with rubber tips.
What caused this breakdown? Why suddenly was no one cleaning this sidewalk?
I blame it on the doctrine of accountability. I blame it on the fact that institutional employees are now instructed very specifically not to waste their departmental budgets on such luxuries as jurisdictional neighbourliness. I blame it on the fact that they are being discouraged from being first on the scene.
"Do your bit and nothing more," our political bosses tell our public employees these days. "We are not a charity. That other bit is someone else's problem. Let them deal with it."
And so this two block stretch of sidewalk in southwest Calgary becomes a living embodiment of the new doctrine of accountability.
The board of education does its bit and nothing more. The city parks crew removes snow from around the tennis courts but not from around the bus stop. And so on down the line with nobody wanting to be out there first doing more than the minimum required.
The old system breaks down. The ethic of winter neighbourliness slips further into the past and day by day Calgary continues its transformation into the kind of city in which Ebenezer Scrooge will soon feel right at home.
© Brent Johner. Originally published in the Calgary Herald, November 2003. Reprint rights available.
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