Unplowed snow streets could impact Edmonton’s Deep Freeze Festival

An Edmonton winter festival is frustrated, feeling the city hasn’t prioritized the Alberta Avenue community ahead of this weekend’s Deep Freeze Festival.

The side street has been left a slushy mess, and it’s hard to park. The organizers of the event feel this creates a safety risk for the 60,000 people expected to come to the neighbourhood and look for parking.

“We as a community are really concerned because that means people will be getting stuck in this very mushy oatmeal, which of course we had the biggest snowfall and now all the softness and the freezing at night and then the mushing and the thawing of the day,” said Christy Morin, the artistic director of the Deep Freeze Byzantine Winter Festival.

Bumpy roads and deep grooves can be found throughout the neighbourhood.

“My car in front, I destroyed it, in the back as well, as you can see there it’s damaged because I’m driving a car, this is not shovelled up this morning. I lost my front underneath this. I’m going to have to go to the garage to fix that,” said Gabriel Briere, an Alberta Avenue resident.

Ewan Melville, another Alberta Avenue resident, said, “My mother and I were driving in, and we have an SUV, which is a relatively, you know, high vehicle, and yeah, getting stuck. We saw trucks sliding in the ruts, and it’s crazy.”

As of Tuesday morning, residential blading for the area is scheduled for the day after the festival wraps up, but organizers are pleading with the city and mayor to move up the snow clearing to Friday. The mayor says he’s working on it.

“Recognizing we are a winter city, we have to work with all of our winter festivals to make sure we’ve created an environment where it’s easy to get, easy to navigate, safe to move around, and so I do think there’s probably a little work left in advance of the Deep Freeze getting started up this weekend,” said Mayor Andrew Knack.

CityNews reached out to the City. They say they cannot reschedule snow clearing because of a City Council policy, to be fair to all neighbourhoods.

But the City says when it comes to the Deep Freeze Festival, they have done extra clearing, saying “This included clearing the bus detour route, critical sidewalks, windrow removal along 118 avenue (business improvement area only), and clearing business district alleys/back lanes, plus the deployment of additional temporary sandboxes.”

As for Morin, she says the community might need to take matters into its own hands.

“We’re thinking that we might have to bring our own little Bobcats and community to come and start shovelling to get rid of this because we can’t have this type of snow for the weekend,” said Morin.