I explain winter in Montreal to my best friend in London via the power of email

"Am suffering from a strange Montreal malaise which is this: at about 11 o'clock some trucks drive very slowly down the road making a noise like a kind of clown's horn but x 100 and over and over like an ambulance. this is to get people out of their houses because the "deneigeuse" is coming (such a lovely word, is in fact you guessed it snow plow) and then the deneigeuses come along and make a fucking racket taking the snow off the road and shooting it into the truck behind (using a souffleuse, aka snowblower) which is then taken to a dump outside montreal and put in an old quarry. Then the little tiny ones shoot down the pavements and frankly unless you're moving fast you can get run over. there are special patrols to make sure people are not driving them drunk under the influence and on the CBC (yawn P, did I tell you how horribly boring the media is here - no wonder they spend all their time outside even in -25) there are often stories of tiny snowblower drivers reversing over cars. anyway the point is they do it at 11pm and wake me up just as i'm dozing off after 4 episodes of Gossip Girl on the trot (have you seen it P? quite perfect for a nite in.)".