Why Montreal’s snow-fighting army is the envy of other Canadian cities

First you hear the sirens, reminiscent of an air raid warning: dee-duh, dee-duh, dee-duh. Then an armada of trucks, awesome in scale and might. Private property is impounded; residents run scared.It is not a military invasion – not exactly – but the routine process of snow removal, or déneigement, in Montreal. This unsnowing, to translate literally, is one of the most impressive such efforts in the world – even more so this week when Montreal was buried under the heaviest four-day snowfall on record.