By The Canadian Press

Another snow day for Toronto kids, Prairie provinces brace for storms, ice and snow

Jan 18, 2022 | 5:12 AM

A snowstorm that closed schools in parts of southern Ontario and Quebec on Monday kept many of them shut again on Tuesday, while some parts of the Prairies that were already hit with freezing rain were contending with plunging temperatures and snow.

Several boards in the Toronto area, like the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board, the Toronto Catholic District School Board and the York Region District School Board, said classes would go ahead remotely through online learning Tuesday. 

In the country’s capital, the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board said schools would be open but the Ottawa Student Transportation Authority cancelled all bus service because many residential roads have yet to be plowed. Parents were told they were welcome to drop their children off at school, but had to pick them up at the regular end of the school day.

The Toronto District School Board, meanwhile, said there would be no live remote or virtual learning, noting in an online post that 36 of its schools still needed to have snow removed from their roofs — a task it said couldn’t be completed Monday due to poor weather and road conditions.

Toronto Mayor John Tory said there were 600 road plows, 360 sidewalk plows, and 200 salt trucks out trying to clear roads and walkways.

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“Work is ongoing 24 hours a day until the job is done,” he said. 

Crews had completed 11 rounds of plowing on expressways, 14 rounds on major roads, and were hoping to have a second round of plowing done on local roads by the end of Tuesday, Tory said.

Then the work will focus on snow removal and clean-up, he said.

“We will be deploying snow removal teams – something we only do in exceptional snow circumstances – starting with major roads once plowing operations have been substantially completed,” Tory said.

The regional GO Transit network warned service would be reduced on Tuesday and to expect delays or cancellations, while several subway lines in Toronto were not running late Monday night due to what the TTC said were weather-related mechanical issues.

A union representing TTC workers said 540 buses were stranded Monday and called on the transit service to implement a better snowstorm contingency plan.

Highways were still not in great shape either, said OPP Sgt. Kerry Schmidt. Some vehicles were still stuck, a truck was jackknifed Tuesday morning, and volume was building to more than what was seen Monday.

“We are not in a position to have everything rolling right now with everybody out,” he said in a morning Twitter broadcast.

Winter storm and wind warnings were also in place for much of Alberta, parts of southern Manitoba were expected to see heavy snowfall, and winter storm, and snowfall and freezing rain warnings were issued in parts of Saskatchewan as well.

RCMP in northern Alberta recommended late Monday that people to stay off the highways after they said they’d responded to multiple collisions.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 18, 2022

The Canadian Press