"He's nuts," says his next-door neighbour.
"All my friends think it's crazy," says his youngest son.
But perhaps it is the rest of us who have lost it.
Luc Guertin packs down snow Sunday atop the two-storey-high bank he’s built in the driveway of his home in the Ottawa suburb of Orleans. (Roy MacGregor/The Globe and Mail)
Guertin's driveway snowbank stood higher than two very tall men Friday morning before the latest blast hit in the Wicked Winter of 2008. By yesterday afternoon, the growing bank had passed the second storey of his home in this Ottawa suburb and was threatening the chimney.
Guertin is certain he now holds the world's record because, well, who else would be "crazy" enough to spend an entire winter hauling the snow up from his drive to pack it into a monolith? It has become the National Capital Region's oddest tourist attraction - and many hope its most fleeting.
The 44-year-old Ottawa native began it, he says, simply because Environment Canada was predicting a winter to end all winters and, besides, as a carpenter, his natural inclination is to build things. There is the perfect backyard rink. And there is the robot costume - but more on that later.
He began in November with a normal shovel, lifting the snow and packing it down, then carefully squaring it off, just as he has done for years in the backyard to create snow banks around his rink every bit as upright and resilient as arena boards.
He then switched to a shovel with a longer handle, and then longer still. He built a special adapter for his snowblower so that, on a calm day, it would spray straight up like a fountain and curl just so that the snow would land on the brow of the growing hill and he could then pat it down with the longer shovel.
Around December, he had to bring in a two-step stool, then a four-step one, then a stepladder. In February, he had to borrow a full extension ladder and, today, even that is not quite high enough as he heads up and then has to crawl to get out onto the top for the packing down.
There was a time around Christmas when he thought he would create a snow version of the Gaspé's popular Percé Rock, but the bank grew so high and heavy that he began to worry that a hole through it might be seen as a safety concern.
Already this past weekend the fire department and the local bylaw officer have come to cruise by Guertin's Toulouse Crescent home, their official vehicles carefully picking their way through the amateur photographers and video recorders who have come to see for themselves.
Guertin is now hoping for more snow, at least one more big wallop that will provide him without enough cold raw material to complete the turret he is now thinking of constructing at the end closest to the road.
He imagines himself and his three boys - Sam, 15, William, 13, and Adrien, 12 - standing there and able to survey a world that seems, these days, to have been all but crushed by the falling white.
There may be blossoms in British Columbia and chinooks in Alberta, but for the rest of the country there has only been snow, more snow and more snow yet to come.
It has created a nation in the throes of cabin fever, with families fleeing, where possible, in those provinces holding March Break, and with daylight time particularly welcome yesterday in those parts of the country where people were able to use a simple twist of the finger to lop off an hour of this unbelievable winter.
No matter what the real definition of "cabin fever" - an irritability and restlessness brought on during long sea voyages or long winters spent in isolated frontier dwellings - the signs are far more about this early March than crocuses.
What else can explain the current state of Parliament Hill?
Why else would the people of Alberta not even bother heading out to vote?
Everywhere Canadians look - from the stock market to the gas pump - there is only misery and a desperate wish for better times to come.
But not on Toulouse Crescent, not at No. 1657 where Luc Guertin's snowbank rises up like some frozen tsunami about to crush the cab of the truck he sometimes stands on to smooth out the sides.
The Wicked Winter of 2008, says Guertin, is the best winter he's had since he was a little kid and he and his six siblings would build forts and tunnels all day long.
There are even days when he will dress up in a complete robot costume he built with his own hand and head out to polish off the driveway with lights flashing across his head and disembodied talk flying out the speaker that serves as a mouth.
"I love it when people driving by think this guy's got to hire a robot to clean his drive," he says.
"I like it," says youngest son, Adrien, "but all my friends think it's crazy."
"My wife thinks I'm crazy, too," says Guertin. "But that's okay - I am crazy!"
"He's nuts, all right," says neighbour April Desjardins with a laugh.
"But, you know, it does show us how much snow we've had this year."
No comments:
Post a Comment