Take care of sidewalks - yours and others
Keep your vulnerable neighbours safe
A week before Christmas, my staff let me know that an older lady slipped and fell on the ice near 118 Avenue. A teenager whose family was renting our meeting room for a Christmas party helped her up and brought her inside. I found her in the bathroom, dealing with a bleeding nose, scrapes, and broken glasses.
It’s easy for anyone to take a spill. I’m afraid to fall this winter as I tripped this fall and broke my tailbone, and still have some issues. The thought of falling on it again makes me walk very carefully. The lady fell when she was trying to walk to church because she didn’t want to drive in the fresh snow and get stuck. We brought her band-aids, let her rest and drove her home later. When we got to her house, she was very thankful for both the ride and the fact that someone had shovelled her sidewalk.
Just like now, temperatures had been going above and below zero resulting in freezing and thawing, sometimes raining, sometimes snowing. This weather makes it very difficult to keep sidewalks clear and safe, but we have to do our best. Our vulnerable neighbours are depending on it.
Gravel is your best bet when you have snow piles on each side of your walkway melting and running onto the sidewalk during the day and then freezing overnight. Residents are used to finding gravel in the green boxes at their local community league; however, the City of Edmonton made changes to this free service. In our area, sand/gravel is only available at Westwood and Eastwood community leagues, or outside the maintenance yard by the Quasar Bottle Depot or the Borden Parking swimming pool parking lot.
Built-up snow or ice can be softened into slush using ice melt, then scraped off. If you are walking, you can pick up ice melt at the Canadian General Store on 90 Street — a 10 kg bag is $5.98. FreshCo also sells it for $6.99 per bag.
Alberta Avenue and Eastwood community leagues have both signed up to participate in the city’s Snow Angels and Snow Heroes program. They received shovels to give to volunteer shovelers or other families in need and will match volunteers with residents in need of assistance with shoveling. Kids can pick up a Snow Heroes sheet and track how many times they help someone with snow removal. Volunteers will be given prizes or gift cards. Both leagues had a kickoff event and plan to have a wrap up event in the spring.
If you have the means and ability, go fill buckets with sand and share them with your neighbours who don’t, or just make sure your whole block is safe. Keeping our sidewalks clear and helping out someone in need is the neighbourly thing to do.
Offer or request snow help:
Alberta Avenue residents
membership@albertaave.org
780-477-2773
Eastwood residents
info@eastwoodhub.org
780-477-2354
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Falling is a curse of winter in Edmonton. Thank you for this safety information.
Great program and very much needed at this time of the year. Beautiful work going on in the community. A feel good story.