Blanketed back-to-back 

In all his years working for the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake (MCK)’s Public Works Unit, Terry Diabo Jr. does not remember experiencing snow like the community has faced in the last week.

“Back when I was a driver, we’ve had one or two storms that were more of a slow, continuous storm. I don’t recall getting anything like this before, not since I was a teenager in the early 1990s,” said Diabo, who is the manager of the roads and highway department of the Public Works Unit.

Public Works crews and contractors have been hard at work for the past few days clearing the snow.

Diabo said that the clearing is taking more time than usual due to a combination of factors. First, the sheer amount of snow in town means it takes more time to clear. For example, some sections of town that would be cleared in half of a driver’s shift were taking three quarters of the shift to complete.

Second, they are down a couple of drivers, due to illness and prescheduled time off. According to Diabo, this has especially affected drivers taking over during breaks or at the end of others’ shifts.

Diabo and Town Garage manager Ken Phillips have even been back on the ground to take some shifts.

“We’re the bosses, but we still have to help out when it’s needed. We don’t just sit in the office and tell people what to do,” said Diabo.

Third, they do not have access to all the equipment they would ideally need for the clearing to be an extremely smooth operation.

Some of the equipment has needed to be repaired, meaning it is unavailable for use at the moment, in part due to heavy usage during the initial days of the clearing operations. Diabo said that, luckily for them, most of those issues came after the bulk of their operations in the beginning of the week.

Drivers from Public Works working their regular daytime shifts are being joined by on-call operators who work 12 hours shifts as well as contractors, usually truck owners, who bring the snow to the dumping sites.

Some contractors have not been available every day, and even with them they only have a limited number of trucks to work with, said Diabo.

Normally, in the event of a snowstorm, everyone is assigned a section of town, with priority given to major arteries and installations - highways, schools, the Kahnawake Fire Brigade, and the hospital, for example.

“Ideally, if it snowed overnight, the guys on call would come in at 2 a.m. They’d be able to do their sections and have that all ready to go before school starts,” said Diabo.

Obviously, this has not been an ideal situation. As such, Public Works is still on the ground, doing their best to clear the snow to make the whole town clean and easily accessible.

“We’re doing the best with what we have, and I ask that people please be patient with us, we’re doing this for everybody’s benefit,” said Diabo.

The snow has brought back memories of winters past for many Kahnawa’kehró:non.

“It has been a long time since we saw this much snow and it reminded me of my childhood because the amount we have now was basically the same back then,” said Karahkwine McGregor.

She said she was happy to share memories of the winters of her youth with her two boys, aged 14 and 8, who have never experienced winters quite like this one.

“We are ready for the next one!” she said.

Elizabeth Ann Curotte also remembered fond winter memories of her youth upon seeing the snow Sunday.

“The snowfall reminded me of years gone by, when we were absolutely looking forward to big snowfall because it meant hours and hours of us being outside making forts, igloos, and having snowball fights with our cousins,” said Curotte.

The elder’s happy memories soon were joined by a sense of dread - it just kept snowing.

“There was shock at the amount of snow that fell non-stop. It was horrible, yet absolutely beautiful,” she said.

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