It was a beautiful January morning, and Cathy Parlee thought she’d go for a walk.
“I was going to take 20 minutes and walk downtown,” she says. “I didn’t get very far.”
Instead, Parlee slipped on the street in front of her neighbour’s house. As she got up, her left wrist hurt.
“I thought I had maybe sprained it, but it hurt too much, so I went back home — and ended up in emergency,” she says.
The doctor diagnosed a break, and now Parlee’s sporting a neon pink cast for the next six weeks. She’s miffed.
“You realize how much you need both hands to do anything. I’m right-handed, thank God, but you can’t dress yourself, I can’t even cut my own food,” she says. “You can’t do anything.”
Freezing and thawing temperatures the last few weeks have occasionally turned Nakusp’s streets and sidewalks into slippery skating rinks, especially in the morning. Residents talking on a local community Facebook page say they’ve been afraid to go outside at times.
“You never know when you are going to hit a patch of ice,” Ruth Wethal wrote. “Would be good if they could sand at the same time they are plowing or immediately after.”
The village’s director of operations says crews are out almost everyday sanding and salting at intersections and on hills, and when there’s more than four inches of snow, they’ll clear the sidewalks too. But Warren Leigh says the village can’t sand or salt on private property, and when it comes to icy conditions, it’s up to residents to take care.
“If it is freezing and thawing, it’s not the world’s responsibility to make it safe for you to walk around,” says Leigh. “You have to wear proper footwear, and if you’re infirm or elderly, you have to take special precautions.”
“We do the best we can with what we have.”
That explanation doesn’t sit well with the Parlees.
“Nobody’s asking for the streets and sidewalks to be taken down to where it’s summertime traction,” says Dave Parlee, Cathy’s husband. “We’re asking for adequate sand on intersections, and asking for roadways to be widened the way they’re supposed to be.”
Parlee has taken his complaints to MP Richard Cannings, a provincial deputy minister and the ombudsman. He’s not happy and the couple says they’re looking at suing for damages.
But that would be a tough legal nut to crack, says a Nakusp lawyer.
“[Municipalities] have insulated themselves as best as they can from liability, and they’ve taken a lot of cases to court,” says Christopher Johnston of case law on what are called ‘slip-and-falls’. “They don’t give in easily, and it has to be a pretty bad situation before you find liability on the municipality.”
Johnston says he’s had some locals come to him wanting to sue local government, and the difficulty is trying to prove the village was grossly negligent in the way it manages winter time hazards.
“There are going to be bumps on the sidewalk, there’s going to be slush on the road, and ice on the road,” he says. “They aren’t expected to be out sanding the moment ice appears.
“There’s some risk walking down the street, and if you’re walking down the street, you’re assuming that risk.”