The other day I came home with the kids from school only to find that the plow had been by, and there was a huge dumping of hard, icy crap filling in the end of the driveway. I managed to ram the van through the mess and since we had a skating playdate with friends down the street, I resigned myself to digging through the mess when we got home.
About two hours later we came home, and HOLY COW, someone had cleared out the end of our driveway. And not just ours – every one on the street. We’re talking about 100 houses. Judging by the tire tracks, it was one of those little snowplows that clears the sidewalks.
(People in places like Florida and Seattle and Toronto just had their MINDS BLOWN by the fact that here in Ottawa, there is so much snow that we actually have wee little baby snowplows devoted to just clearing the sidewalks and pathways. We are SERIOUS about snow removal here.)
There’s no sidewalk on either side of our residential crescent but I did see a sidewalk clearer working on the main street next to ours when we went off to go skating. So I’m thinking he, what, took extra time at the end of his day to come around our street and clean out the end of everyone’s driveway?
NICEST. GUY. EVER.
So since I have no way of finding this man and offering him my thanks, a generous cut of my investment portfolio, and possibly one of my children, I thought I’d just blog about it and say hey, dude, someone out here noticed, someone appreciated, and someone thinks you’re a stand-up kind of guy.
Thank you.
TurtleHead 
As a mom who comes and goes from our house several times a day that also makes me all mushy. Those snowplow ridges are wicked awful to shovel especially on a double driveway with no help. During the last big storm one of ur neighbors came twice during the day to snowplow our entire driveway so didn’t have to shovel. My aching pregnant back was weepy with gratitude 😉
I have had that happen a couple of times with neighbors who had snowblowers before we got one. It’s such a kind, thoughtful thing to do and yes, it has made me a little teary.
Awesome! Small kindnesses, especially from strganers, are so touching. Perhaps because they are so unexpected, and thus such a heart warming surprise.
That is tremedous!!!
last week we had a neighbour do that for us. SOO AWESOME!
So nice! Hee, a woman in our neighborhood just moved here from Ottawa and she couldn’t believe that we were shut down for a week with 10cm of snow. Oh Seattle.
If you’re anything like me, maybe it’s a good thing you didn’t get to thank him personally. When we were getting off the plane in Toronto last week, the man who was sitting beside me pointed out that I’d left my favourite black sweater on the seat (it kind of blended in) while I was about to get off the plane. Even Eve said “you looked like you wanted to hug him”. The poor guy looked a little scared – hey, when I’m thankful, I”m REALLY THANKFUL. 🙂
That is fantastic.
Sweet. Anyone that clears my snow gets a thumbs up.
That is awesome! Nice to see someone go out of their way to make everyone else’s day a whole lot brighter.
Also, people in Seattle would be blown away by concept of clearing sidewalks, let alone having mini snowplows 😃 It seems a full-sized snowplow is enough of a rarity.
Re, this: (People in places like Florida and Seattle and Toronto just had their MINDS BLOWN…)
I also think they’d be amazed to know how we spent our Friday evening last week. The car was grinding horrifically and literally vibrating and we just knew the wheel wells were FULL of hardcore snow and ice. So we parked at the World Exchange Centre (heated parking garage), took the kids to the Elgin Street Diner for dinner and, voila, when we got back there were mini-snowbanks all around the car which had dropped out of various hidden parts of the undercarriage. The drive home was the smoothest ride ever (AND we got to eat at ESD).