About 100 people — many who use canes, crutches or wheelchairs — protested the poor sidewalk ice clearing in Halifax today. Saying the sidewalks were to icy to walk on, the protesters literally took to the street, walking a two-block stretch of Gottingen Street to express their displeasure with city ice removal efforts.
The Gottingen Street sidewalk were indeed treacherous, covered with six to eight inches of ice, except for in front of a couple of businesses and the North End Community Health Clinic, which had cleared the sidewalks to bare concrete.
No politicians or City Hall managers showed up to speak to the protesters. A handful of police officers good-naturedly escorted the group and blocked the southbound lane of Gottingen to cars for the length of the march, about 15 minutes.
One protester was Chantell Lemieux, who on a rainy day earlier this week slipped on the sidewalk while walking home from the grocery store and fractured her fibula. She’ll be wearing a non-weight bearing cast for the next six weeks, so must walk with crutches. Lemiux said she came to the protest because she wants the city to “provide safe and accessible crosswalks for everybody.”
