No Days Off in Ottawa | Storm Chasin' S2 | Episode 2 | Clintar Ottawa

Added: 2026-05-08

[00:00:02]Snow doesn't care if it's your birthday, your kids' birthday. It's going to come.

[00:00:06]>> Every day is a grind.

[00:00:09]>> We've had guys who've been working 20 or 30 days straight.

[00:00:13]>> I know we've got everyone on call. Radar doesn't look good.

[00:00:19]>> Battery is frozen and we're trying to find the battery.

[00:00:23]>> It gets in your blood then you live for this.

[00:00:48]Heat. Heat.

[00:01:09]Welcome to Ottawa, Ontario. Canada's capital city with a regional population of over 1 million residents.

[00:01:18]Known for its government institutions, thriving tech sector, and harsh winter climate, Ottawa is a city that must function no matter what mother nature throws at it. Geographically, the city sits along the Ottawa, Gatineau, and Redau rivers. The region experiences true Canadian winters, long, cold, and snowy with an average annual snowfall of approximately 100 in or 250 cm of snow.

[00:01:47]Winter temperatures regularly plunge below minus4 degrees Fahrenheit or minus20° C. For Ottawa's businesses, government offices, and essential services, there is no such thing as a snow day. Preparation, quick response, and reliable snow management are critical to keeping the capital running.

[00:02:09]And this is where the team at Clintar Ottawa excels.

[00:02:22]Chris Burns. I'm the uh co-owner of the business. We've been in business in Ottawa since 2007. When we started out, we were one salt truck, two tractors, I think the first year, three shovelers. I was the salt truck driver, ran the operation, spent many nights shoveling, and here we are almost 20 years later with a huge team and a big business.

[00:02:49]I mean, in some ways it was easier back then. So, with a smaller team and there was repeated work every day, it was just routine. We just went out, we did it. We came back the next night, we did it again. People would come back and there was no guys missing shifts or, you know, everybody looked after each other. Now, as we've gotten bigger, we have to deal with some of those challenges of people and and reliability and stuff, but so we've built up a real good team of of long-term, you know, supervisor and management level key people that have got us to the point where we're at now.

[00:03:22]Our our model has kind of been the same from day one. We're big ashvault, big turf year round. So, commercial properties, campus style properties, industrial properties. I started the company. It's not me. Like, I'm not out at night clearing sidewalks or or plowing anymore. Sometimes I miss it.

[00:03:42]Sometimes I don't. But it's our team.

[00:03:44]It's our guys like Randolph and Jeremy and and our supervisors and operators that have been here for years. They're the ones that get the job done. And that this type of industry is really demanding in the winter. You can't make plans. you're a slave to the weather and and the variable forecasts that sometimes aren't aren't right. It was 24 hours a day for for the uh for the winter.

[00:04:09]>> But Chris isn't alone in understanding the sacrifice. His co-owner Trevor and director of operations Jeremy Kirkham both know what it takes to build something lasting in an industry that never sleeps.

[00:04:23]So basically um we've got myself and then Randolph who's a snow manager, snow ops manager. So we look at it as he's the get things done in the field guy and I'm the plan things in the background guy. So it's been a change for me. I've been in operations pretty much 20 years out in the field. Um the last year or so I've been really behind the scenes. I got to get used to sleeping again cuz I used to never sleep. Um, but you we've got a solid team. So now I can sleep and just plan stuff so the guys can go out and perform for our clients. So I got started in this industry in my early 20s. I'm obviously in my mid to late 40s now, so I've been in it a long time. Um, I never thought I would get into this.

[00:05:07]Um, had a baby on the way. We needed to make money. Um, my friend owned a company with his dad. Asked me if I wanted to shovel snow. I didn't really want to, but we needed money. Um, I shoveled snow for about two winters and then decided that I did not want to shovel snow, so I bought my own plow truck. Um, I didn't tell my partner at the time I was buying a plow truck. I just showed up with it. So, that went over like a lead balloon. Um, pretty much ever since then, I'm truly passionate about it. Um, and I do it because the people, everyone who I've met in this industry, most of them are really good people, a lot of them, and then they fall in love with it. Um, can honestly say I love this industry. Then Chris and Trevor reached out to me, asked me if I wanted to run a site for them. I jumped at the opportunity was a 3-month contract and I ended up now to today it's 2 years exactly today since I joined this team and now I'm the director of operations.

[00:06:08]And as conditions begin to line up, a storm starts to take shape. Early forecasts point to a modest snowfall, but projections continue to shift as new data comes in. Timing moves, intensity changes, and what begins as a routine event quickly becomes something far less predictable.

[00:07:00]The snow industry is 100% dependent on snowfall.

[00:07:04]>> There's no room for excuses.

[00:07:06]>> We recognize very little downtime.

[00:07:09]>> They understand snow.

[00:07:12]>> We trust Casey.

[00:07:19]We have found case machines to be extremely dependable, durable, and they perform in the extreme conditions that we face every single time it snows.

[00:07:32]As we've been talking about, this uh storm system basically starts up this morning with some light snow, continues through uh Friday at 7:00 a.m. We've been calling for 5 to 10 cm. It still looks good for that. I think during that time span, you could see 4 to 8 cm. Just keep that in mind. The further west you go, the further south you go. As I mentioned before, the first two and a half comes this evening basically by 9:00 p.m. and then the second one doesn't come until Thursday. And if you look, uh, you can see that there's some good rates through about 1:00 a.m. in the morning and then it kind of tapers back for a little bit.

[00:08:15]So, judging by that data, they'll come in, do a cleanup, get a little break, and then have to come back in. Right?

[00:08:20]That's kind of what it's looking like on your weather forecast. We've already got some people out monitoring and the hospital people will be in and uh some people in the west end as well. So yeah, all the campus crews will be in.

[00:08:32]>> We'll get everything rolling on time and guys will get a nice little break and then we'll come in and clean up the rest. Thanks for the update, Mark.

[00:08:40]>> And with a plan set into place, the crew spends a few hours doing equipment checks and repairs before heading out to tackle this event. And with the team implementing a new brine system to combat the massive salt shortage, it's never without its challenges.

[00:08:56]>> We've made a switch in our business to uh away from salt and into trying to go most exclusively with brine applications in our deicing. So there's been growing pains in that both in equipment and and learning the process and the the making of the brine which we're doing ourselves now. That's a new process for us. The equipment that we use to apply the brine is new to us in a lot of cases and new to our operators. So, there's a learning curve and an adjustment period for that.

[00:09:27]Educating our customers on a different approach, too. They're used to seeing salt on the ground, physical grains of salt, that they can tell we did something. And brine is not like that.

[00:09:37]It's it's sprayed on the surface and unless you see it when it goes down, sometimes you can't tell it's there. And so educating them that it's a different process, but the benefits of the brine versus salting, that's those have been the biggest challenges I think this year.

[00:09:53]>> So, we had a brine tank system on here from VSI that um was either losing a seal uh or the pump was not we we weren't sure what, but we need one of these um one of these tanks on this UTV to spray at Parliament Hill tonight. So, what we did was we took um a unit off another sidewalk machine that we didn't need. Uh put it on took the other one off, put this one on, and now we've had to uh hot wire it cuz the connections don't match. But you got to do what you have to do. We'll fix it later. Uh back to the right connections. We're just strapping it down. We'll fill it up.

[00:10:31]We'll test it. And then it's good to go back to the site. We're in the middle of a season where we're making a transition from salt to brine. And in order to do that, uh, you know, we have all this new equipment that we're not very familiar with. So, we're learning as we go. And, um, yeah, for whatever reason, the old one, which is over there behind the forks, uh, would not spray. So, um, this one, smaller tank, smaller unit.

[00:11:03]Honestly, probably a better weight ratio for this machine anyway. Uh, and I think it's going to work better down there.

[00:11:11]So, over here, we've got our 6,000gallon storage for our brine making unit. So, we we haul salt from our dome into the brine maker, and Kathy is our our brine specialist. So, we're pumping out about 12,000 gallons a day whenever we're rolling. We've invested very heavily into liquid deicing this year to get away from granular, which is working in our favor with the salt shortage that's currently affecting North America. So, we make brine all day, every day, ship it out across the city, and we've got some vendor partners who help us do that. They bring us the water, they haul it off site for us. We utilize Yep. some other technologies. Our snow raiders all have um brine capabilities in them. So the guys can plow the sidewalks and then this tank's full of brine and it lays it down on the sidewalks. And then on our bigger campuses, we've got a bunch of side by sides that have VSI 110 E legacy sprayers in them. So, they're doing like um government sites, educational facilities, things like that that have uh like about 30 acres of hard top that we need to spray every time it uh snows. So, it's really benefited our company and the clients are seeing that it works well and it's good for the employees cuz on a large scale, we're the only ones in Ottawa doing it to this scale. So, we're we're ahead of the curve on that. BSI brine system where we're dumping clear water out of our tanks. Kathy's putting the salt in it and you can see it comes out like salt water like what you'd see in the ocean if you took a cup of water.

[00:12:49]It's 23.3% salt in there. Once it fills up, Kathy will pump it out to our storage tanks outside. Then we'll haul it around the city so we can service our clients with it. Um got a lot of education from the guys at Storm out in Minnesota. We really knew nothing about it 2 years ago. Now, I'd say we're the Ottawa experts in it. And it's not only good for the environment, it's sustainable for your operations. With the uh North American salt shortage that's currently going on and big companies like Cargill talking about getting out of deicing, we're going to need to find an alternative to rock salt. This is the main brain of the motion. All the operation happen in here. Make it, store it, load trucks, everything's come from this area right here. Now, this is one of our vendor partners that we use. They haul the water for us, 3,000 gallons at a time in a nice heated water truck. We call them, they show up within 20 minutes. Kathy makes the brine outside and it gets pumped out to our on-site storage, which can hold 12,000 gallons.

[00:13:51]It whenever the guys show up with their VSI sprayers, they hook onto this hose, we pump them 600 gallons, and then they go off and start spraying. So, it's a pretty uh smooth operation now that we've got a handle on it. It definitely was a a big learning curve, but we're getting there.

[00:14:49]It starts with a legacy. Traditions and skills passed down through generations.

[00:14:54]But respect for the past doesn't mean being stuck in it. It's time to break the chain and demand more. Demand brighter nights. Demand smarter control.

[00:15:04]Demand more features for less expense.

[00:15:07]Because this is the Boss standard.

[00:15:10]Smarter, tougher. Upgrade your legacy with Boss. Built to back you up.

[00:15:19]>> So the forecast for today has been evolving for the last two days. It started off at like 2 cm, went up to 5, hit 8 cm about 24 hours ago. Then our our recent uh updates on true weather showing less than 4 cm now, and there's going to be a bit of a lull overnight.

[00:15:39]They'd called for the storm to start at around 10:00 a.m. Um, we're currently noon and as we're driving there is a little bit of flurry activity, but nothing's sticking as the pavement temperatures too too high. We keep an eye on the radar every day, me and Trevor and Randolph. Um, so we we talked to some of our vendor partners, sites we take care for them, planned out their sites. They want to start at 3:00 in the afternoon because it's a hightraic hospital facility. For ourselves, we pretty much had it planned out yesterday. We're going to have people in during the day. We had to pivot on that whenever the snow didn't show up in time. And we have formulas. I just punch in how much it's going to snow and then that lets me know how many people to bring in for each site. Um something Trevor's been working on for about 6 months and we've finally got it dialed in. So, we sent the message out around 10:00 a.m. this morning that everyone's going to show up for between 10:00 and 11:00 p.m. tonight. We'll roll out sidewalk crews, roll out the plow trucks, roll out the uh loaders, and then 2:00 a.m. we'll roll out our deicing units. That'll give the operators a nice head start before we start laying down liquids or granular application tonight.

[00:16:52]>> So, even if the rates pick up, each site can be prepared to tackle it. But as Jeremy drives through the West End, checking sites, it becomes clear the snow isn't arriving as expected. After days of planning, equipment repairs, and crew coordination, the situation is changing in real time. A call has to be made.

[00:17:22]>> Hey Jeremy, go ahead.

[00:17:23]>> Hey, Trevor. I'm out in the west end checking the sites like we talked about.

[00:17:27]Looks like this storm is going to be a dud. There's nothing going on out here.

[00:17:31]Um radar doesn't look good. I know we've got everyone on call. We should keep them on call and let them know about that big storm that's coming in later on this week.

[00:17:41]>> Yeah, that sounds good. I mean, I looked that the radar is kind of evaporating as it comes up from Peter kind of area. So, >> yeah, we'll see if we get anything.

[00:17:50]Might get something to scrape, but I'm not sure.

[00:17:52]>> All right. So, we'll plan for that next big storm. Thank you.

[00:17:55]>> All right. Okay.

[00:17:56]>> Thank you.

[00:17:57]>> Okay. Bye.

[00:17:57]>> Bye.

[00:17:58]>> It's moments like this that define winter operations. No matter how much planning goes into it, conditions can change in an instant.

[00:18:07]>> You know, we've been in Ottawa since 2007. Every year, the average snowfall in Ottawa is about 250 cm. Every year it comes differently. Sometimes it comes early in November. Sometimes it all comes February, March and and hits us late when we feel like we're, you know, we're getting away. But at the end of the year, it's usually in that same ballpark. It just comes differently. So this year, we're getting hit early. It's been cold, which has provided its own challenges with equipment and and deicing and just working in the elements. But at the end of the day, it's it's weather. We signed up for this business and and this job and uh we have to deal with it. And in this line of work, dealing with it comes with sacrifice. Long hours, time away, and the demands of an unpredictable season.

[00:18:56]>> It's like anything else. It It gets in your blood and like then you live for this. Like you get excited when you know snow is coming and you don't want to do anything but deal with snow. It's it's almost like an adrenaline rush to be honest.

[00:19:11]>> And on a night like this, that team has to be ready to adjust. Tonight we'll we'll ramp up to about 100 people counting um sidewalk crews. Um they're they're actually the hardest working people in this industry. They got the toughest job for sure. And we still spent the last 3 days planning this storm, getting everybody ready. People are trying to sleep. Phones are going off waking them up. So it's like snow isn't for for the faint of heart to be honest.

[00:19:38]It takes a lot of planning and it's not just from like November to April. It's like my job is basically snow around the calendar. Well, tonight you'll see um the whole process of how we start the shift, getting the crews out, communicating with the loaders, operators, which normally don't come to the shop. But the main uh walks would start from here. Load up all the trailers, get the machine from the shop, load up the trailers, get their shovels, everybody fully equipped, and out the door.

[00:20:15]>> With the plan in place, the team waits for the storm to arrive. By 11 p.m., the operation ramps up as brings the team together, making final adjustments before deployment.

[00:20:29]>> Okay, that's everybody tonight. Okay, welcome everybody. It's a snowy night tonight. Hope everyone dress appropriate for the weather tonight. It's a little bit colder than we think tonight. So, we'll be going out there. I need everybody to be safe for the cruise right now. You have Where's your guys, Diego? How much guys you need? One or two? Okay. So, you need one. And that's your crew there. Where's the driver?

[00:20:54]>> Okay.

[00:20:55]>> Cosmo.

[00:20:57]>> Drive them.

[00:20:58]>> Drive them for me, please.

[00:21:01]>> Okay. Okay. How much are you guys? One, two, >> and two more coming. So, three of you guys.

[00:21:09]>> Okay, take two and go to Orins.

[00:21:12]>> Okay. Are you able to drive that truck with the mirror?

[00:21:16]>> Yeah.

[00:21:17]>> Okay. You have to be very careful. Okay.

[00:21:21]Put the window down. Put your head out.

[00:21:23]Okay. All right. So, you take two persons. Okay. Just grab your guys and stay aside so I could see what happening. I need everybody I need everybody to go to the trucks. Everybody be safe out there tonight.

[00:22:06]Heat up Battery is frozen and we're trying to find the battery.

[00:22:33]It's life in Canada. Everything freezes.

[00:22:36]You got to learn how to deal with it.

[00:22:39]about - 18 and then you get the wind on top of it, so it'll get to like -30 with the wind sometimes. Luckily, it's not too bad right now, but it's definitely cold. Normally, when it snows, it's not that cold. It might be like - 5. That's ideal for snow, but this we're have weird weather patterns right now.

[00:22:58]>> Found the battery.

[00:23:00]>> It is under the seat.

[00:23:02]>> Under the seat. Very good.

[00:23:05]>> Well, at least it is kind of easy to get.

[00:23:07]>> Found it. That's good. I need to see the cables.

[00:23:14]>> And with the battery fixed, it was time to call in the big guns to operate the heavy equipment across the city.

[00:23:25]So, right now I am uh opening lanes at our largest plant in the west end of Canada. What that means is just that, you know, as the sidewalk machines go around and so on, they have they have a nice clean lane to work in to push snow into. This is not detail work. I'm really uh bulking the snow off as fast as I can on the lanes so that when we come back and do detail and we start back plating um and get snow out that the bulk of the snow on some of the more difficult lanes to plow is already gone.

[00:24:04]And that makes it easier when we clean up. Uh cuz we're not pushing all the snow. We're just pushing the snow that fell since we did this. So, we do that and then we carry on and we let the snow fall here for a while. We let the sidewalk crews do their thing, push all the snow out and then we'll come back and do a detail closer to the morning so that the site looks as good as it can.

[00:24:28]one of the owners uh partner here for um about three years now and but I've I've worked uh here with Chris the president for 11 years. I started as an account manager but now I'm in charge of sales and client relations for the most part. Uh but my my background is is really just doing the work. So I still love to get out here and do this. I am operating a 920 cat loader and I have a 14 ft metal plus live edge blade on the front. Uh, one of our newer blades and at 14 ft I can clear at least a lane and a half at one time. But in terms of the big equipment, the plows have just gotten to be so much better. Uh whether you're running an Arctic or Metal Plus or any uh any number of others, uh they scrape better, cleaner, more efficient, and it's it's like running a Cadillac. Yeah.

[00:25:40]As of right now, I'm a operator for uh Clint are operating the uh loaders and uh running around sight to sight doing curb to curb cleans. The thing I love about this job the most is probably clean up and seeing what you can accomplish in such a small amount of time in a way and still get a lot of things finished. And as a team, it works really well, too. Honestly, the satisfaction of plowing the snow, it's uh it's a weird thing, but uh just seeing when you're done clean up and everything else, it's kind of a very good satis satisfaction. I used to plow for the airport and uh that was a pretty big gig. And uh unfortunately the guy I was plowing for lost the contract and uh fell upon Clint this year and so far so good. Honestly, it's been a cool cool run with them. I've been uh working in the industry for 10 years now and uh yes, I enjoy plowing and uh which started off as a big big sort of a bigger company at the airport and uh then moved on to here and so far so good.

[00:26:48]I enjoy, you know, running the equipment first of all, but um plowing to me it's a it's a satisfying job. Um you know, making everything clean, uh opening up all the lots and whatnot for for people uh at businesses and parking lots. It's fun. We do a lot of uh a lot of businesses. Uh you know, there's some guys in Ottawa for Clintar that do the hospital. It's uh you know it's it's achieving knowing that we can have that all opened up for them in the in case of an emergency or or anything. So uh last night I ended up working 10 hours getting home around uh 10:00 in the morning just uh catch up on some sleep and uh going back out tonight for a cleanup. The first time on a lot I you know I was a little nervous over time doing the lots over and over it it it becomes second nature for you and uh and then you just get used to it then you get comfortable.

[00:27:53]When you get repeated 3 to 5 cm snowfalls or squalls which you've been dealing with the last couple days that's where it um gets a bit demoralizing.

[00:28:12]We have storms over and over again every 2 days of 2 3 cm. We have operators and I mean particularly sidewalk crews who just get exhausted cuz they're out every storm takes uh roughly 2 days to to clean and then you get another storm.

[00:28:31]We've had guys who've been working 20 I I want to guess 20 or 30 days straight, maybe with one day off, two days off here and there, but just non-stop. When you're working non-stop like this, I mean, the good thing is for those hourly employees, you're making money, right? You're making money to take home to your family, but you don't get to see your family through the winter. uh cuz you're sleeping during the day uh in order to to come out and do your night shifts.

[00:29:04]>> You know, one of the biggest challenges has been like keeping crews and staff and and our leadership team like motivated through uh repeated snowfalls, which we've we've dealt with this year every day repeatedly uh is a grind. I was married. I had a one-year-old daughter. You know, today I have we have, you know, my daughter is, you know, she's at university, her second year university. She's 20 years old in a couple months with two other boys now that have grown. Like it was chaos.

[00:29:36]You miss out on a lot of your life. Like I've got children who are older now, but I missed out on a lot of their growing up to be honest. Cuz you know, snow doesn't care if it's your birthday, your kids' birthday, your wedding anniversary. It's going to come. Doesn't matter if it's Christmas. that doesn't know it's Christmas, but we got to be out there keeping the community safe.

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[00:31:09]this uh storm the team did pretty well.

[00:31:12]Everybody was uh focused on what they are doing. Everybody was safe for for number one and then we get uh through the first phase and we into the second phase tonight. Plows and sidewalks everything was coordinate correctly.

[00:31:28]Each and every motion is 12 hours and then we're back in tonight now for cleanups. Each storm you'll always find something different, right? Not most of the time everything would run smooth, but you'd have a different sequence and different operational depend on how the storm is passing through. A lot of training had to take place in storms like that. For most of the operators, we have to work as a team. We have to communicate. Communication is a must because right now I'm still communicating with everybody at site that is doing all the cleanups right now. So everybody's on the same page. We have a certain amount of time to get all this clean up tonight. So we have to communicate. The most rewarding thing for me is the team that we've built. You have some people that have been here for 10 years. That's building a team that everyone's pulling in the same direction. And when times get tough in the winter and we're fighting backto backto back storms and everybody's tired, we just we lean on each other and and that's what helps get us get us through those those difficult storms. In the time I've been in the snow removal industry, one of the changes that has affected me the most is the camaraderie in this industry.

[00:32:55]Years ago, I wouldn't even talk to the guy plowing the lot beside me. He wouldn't talk to me. maybe he'd give me the one finger salute on his way by or something. But now we talk all the time like everyone knows what we do. There's no secrets and it's really brought it to a community level. We call ourselves snow fighters. Um it's just a big family and we're just all doing the same thing and we're all lifting one another up in this industry.

[00:33:36]Heat.