Con­struc­tion Season

As the say­ing goes, “the road to hell is paved with good inten­tion”. But for Cana­di­ans, the say­ing takes a very deep and lit­eral mean­ing in the spring.

A pop­u­lar Cana­dian joke claims that there are only two sea­sons in Canada: win­ter and con­struc­tion. Indeed, after our long and harsh win­ters, crews of con­struc­tion work­ers are dis­patched all over Canada to tackle new projects, fix the roads and repair the many cracks in the pave­ment. A good inten­tion, really. Yet, it is one that Cana­di­ans fear almost more than freez­ing rain and the per­spec­tive of los­ing the Stan­ley Cup to a US hockey team.

Each coun­try has good inten­tions paving the way to hell. France’s is prob­a­bly strikes – inci­den­tally, “strikes and protests sea­son” also starts early in the spring. There is always a strike going on some­where but most are only worth a Gal­lic shrug. For instance, if you com­plain that you haven’t received your pay­check, the answer will invari­ably be “the cheque is in the mail”. Any fur­ther com­plain will be refuted as fol­low: “we posted it long time ago, but the Post Office may be on strike.…” French are used to see part of their admin­is­tra­tions and ser­vices work­ing spo­rad­i­cally. It is not expected to be otherwise.

All in all, French only fear two kinds of strikes and protests: those affect­ing pub­lic trans­porta­tions (trains and sub­ways) and truck driver’s strikes. Trans­port strikes are big in terms on impact on users, espe­cially in Paris where the pop­u­la­tion heav­ily relies on the sub­way and sub­ur­ban trains. Besides, most – if not all – pub­lic trans­porta­tion work­ers are union­ized and are con­sid­ered to have some­what highly priv­i­leged work con­di­tions, so sup­port from the pop­u­la­tion can quickly wear out. Truck driver’s strikes have less of an imme­di­ate effect but can crip­ple the coun­try in no time. They usu­ally block super­mar­kets and gas sup­ply, thus moti­vat­ing the gov­ern­ment to act quickly on the matter.

When it comes to the con­struc­tion sea­son, Cana­di­ans’ atti­tude is not unlike the French’s toward strike – a mix of despair, hope and resignation.

Despair is the best way to describe the feel­ing that crosses your mind when on one of the first sunny days of spring, you notice a bunch of orange signs and arrow scat­tered on the road. Most signs just say “detour” but you could swear they mock you: “you will never get to work on time, ah ah!” Con­struc­tion sites appear to be totally ran­dom most of the time. For instance, on a long stretch of bumpy road, only a few square meters here and there will be patched. Yet, of course, the whole street will be closed for months.

For instance, I worked on the infa­mous Bank Street for almost four years. Every year, a por­tion of the street would be torn up and rebuilt, thus prompt­ing the shut down one of Ottawa’s major down­town artery from April to Octo­ber. Two weeks into the con­struc­tion, we had no buses, no side­walks and we were breath­ing dust for ten blocks. Busi­nesses went bank­rupt faster than the asphalt was sliced and get­ting to work became a daily chal­lenge, even as a pedes­trian. Yet, despite yearly pleas from local busi­ness asso­ci­a­tions and angry res­i­dents, con­struc­tion on Bank Street invari­ably resumes every year. It actu­ally became a fix­ture in Ottawa.

After despair comes hope. After all, con­struc­tion crews are here for a rea­son – there is indeed plenty to fix. Bumpy roads are one of the stuffs Cana­di­ans don’t like and after win­ter, they can be down­right dan­ger­ous. So Cana­di­ans fig­ure it will just be a few months of mis­ery, slow dri­ving, road blocks, detours and one lane free­way. Yeah, you wish. Con­trary to pop­u­lar belief, Canada usu­ally enjoys nice weather from May to Octo­ber – so the con­struc­tion sea­son lasts for six months – half of the year. And no mat­ter how well the roads are fixed, the job will have to be redone the fol­low­ing year.

To top it all off, the Harper gov­ern­ment launched the Canada’s Eco­nomic Action Plan which aims, among other things, at “cre­at­ing jobs through a mas­sive injec­tion of infra­struc­ture spend­ing”. But the mea­sure is crit­i­cized: a lot of projects are said to be just ridicu­lous, like the replace­ment of door-knobs at the Par­lia­ment or the upgrade of water foun­tains. Still, I’m afraid we will see even more con­struc­tion sites this year. Hope­fully, it will at least help the economy…

Even­tu­ally, you know you reached res­ig­na­tion when you sigh to your­self “oh well, if Cana­di­ans like to destroy and rebuild ran­dom stretches of road, so be it”. I guess con­struc­tion sea­son is to Canada what strikes are to France – a cul­tural specialty.

Related posts:

1. Pic­ture of the Week: Man on the Roof
2. Stuffs Cana­di­ans Don’t Like (Part II)
3. The Hol­i­days
4. Hello Frozen Hell…
5. 5 Cana­dian Debates