The City of Winnipeg says a massive dump of snow on Christmas Day and Boxing Day could take weeks to clear.
City officials are urging patience as they work to clear main streets and the sidewalks adjacent to them of the up to 25 centimetres of snow that fell.
Residential streets and sidewalks will have to wait for now.
Currently, Winnipeg is the only major city on the Prairies clears residential sidewalks.
In Calgary, Edmonton and Regina it's the responsibility of property owners, who can end up being fined if they don't clear their sidewalks.
In Winnipeg, garbage and recycling collections has also fallen two days behind schedule.
Dr. Peter Arnott says he was forced to close his medical clinic on Tuesday after a pile of snow pushed onto the sidewalk by snow-clearing crews blocked the entrance.
"There must've been 40 tons of snow out there," Arnott says. "It was a heavy snow. It was the snow from the bucket of a front end loader that tipped it on my sidewalk."
He says he complained to the city but ended up hiring a private contractor at a cost of $1,000 so he could get the clinic open on Wednesday.
Arnott doesn't expect to get reimbursed, but he wants an apology from the city for his trouble.
Ryan Woiden, president of the paramedics union in the city, says the heavy snowfall has created challenges for emergency responders.
"Whether it can be taking a patient from their home in an ambulance in two or three feet of snow, or driving around the city, it can be very difficult," Woiden says.
In some cases, fire paramedics and paramedics will clear the snow from a sidewalk or walkway to make it easier on crews carrying patients on stretchers from their homes to ambulances.
(CTV Winnipeg)
This content appears as provided to The Globe by the originating wire service. It has not been edited by Globe staff.