People attempt to free a car stuck in snow following a heavy snowfall in Toronto, on Thursday, February 13, 2025.Arlyn McAdorey/The Canadian Press
When I was a teenager in Ottawa, my friend Peter Jupp’s 1979 AMC Pacer Wagon (which we called the “Moon Unit”) got stuck in some snow during a bad storm. I got out and pushed as Peter tried to steer it free.
We were having little success. Suddenly, the car rolled forward with ease. I looked to my left and saw my neighbour and family friend Dan Dever hoisting the Pacer forward like it was a sack of potatoes. Dan was an former CFL linebacker who’d played with the Rough Riders and B.C. Lions. His playing days were behind him, but I doubt he even broke a sweat moving the car. Now unstuck, he went on his way, saying, “Take care boys.”
That’s Dan. He is the definition of an upstanding guy. When I started playing Pee Wee football for the McKellar Park Blue Bombers at age 12, I took his number “30” in his honour. If Dan sees someone who needs a hand, he helps.
I thought about Dan’s kindness last week when I attended a production of the “All-Season Follies” performed by the drivers of Toronto on its snow-blown streets. On Jan. 15, the city got hit with more than 30 centimetres of snowfall in parts of the city. It was chaos. Ontario Provincial Police Sgt. Kerry Schmidt reported that the OPP had “responded to 260 crashes and 150 calls involving vehicles stuck in ditches or snowbanks that required towing.” It was the Ice Capades if the entire cast was drunk, stupid and irritable.
There were acts of heroism. They may be getting rid of home delivery at Canadian Post but the public’s right to have junk food hand-delivered to their doorstep during a blizzard remains safe. Toronto’s gig economy workers cried “Ave Imperator, morituri te salutant,” leapt on their e-bikes and rode out into the frozen tempest. I saw many e-bike delivery workers who were barely able to keep upright. They teetered (that’s the charitable way of describing it) and seemed to be playing a two-wheeled version of heads or tails. Heads, you deliver the Egg McMuffin. Tails, you slip underneath a dump truck.
Also making an appearance were the “All-Season Gang,” a chorus of drivers who decided against winter tires. After all, who needs winter tires in a country where it’s winter seven months a year? The “All-Season Gang” were easy to spot. They had no traction and couldn’t accelerate or brake with any certainty. They fishtailed about and, as I passed them, I could see the stark panic on their faces. In an hour and a half of driving I saw a handful of this breed stuck in the drifts.
Did I follow Dan Dever’s example and help them out?
I’m afraid not.
That’s in part because no one would describe me as an upstanding guy but mostly because of my shameful desire to see people get what they deserve. If you don’t have winter tires and drive in a “major snowstorm event” then you deserve to get stuck. If your car doesn’t have snow tires and the heavens drop 30 centimetres of snow, then you ought not to be driving at all.
The weather on Jan. 15 was so bad that even all-wheel-drive vehicles and those with snow tires were having trouble. I was only on the road because I had to pick up a family member from a medical procedure. I mentioned the Jan. 15 snowstorm to my editor and he became animated. He’d seen two or three cars stuck just trying to get out of their parking spot or on a side street. “I normally help people,” he said. “I always help but, I mean, if they can’t even get out of the parking spot they shouldn’t be on the road. The driver and all other pedestrians and drivers are safer if that driver is stuck in the snow.”
Helping a driver get their car out of the way when it is blocking traffic is one thing. Helping a driver who went out and got themself stuck (see: no snow tires) is just encouraging unsafe behaviour. Helping them would just increase the chances that they cause a crash later on and add to that massive OPP tally. If they don’t have traction at five kilometres an hour on a side street, what will happen when they are going 50 kilometres an hour on a main road or even faster on a highway?
So, while it may seem less than upstanding, I will stay in the cozy confines of my car with my heated seats and let my snow tires help me to inch along.
It’s not too late for the “All-Season Gang” to change their ways. We had no business taking an AMC Pacer out in a snowstorm back on that cold Ottawa day in the 1980s. Dan Dever could have strolled by without a backward glance, but he came to our rescue. To turn my back on other stranded souls seems a little ungracious. Perhaps I can become, if not a Good Samaritan, then an ambivalent one. Nothing is colder than a cold heart.
“Blow, blow, thou winter wind. Thou art not so unkind as man’s ingratitude.”