Canadian Man Builds 6-Foot-Tall Snow Tunnel to His Car

ABC News(NEW YORK) — A 26-year-old Canadian teacher says he used a plastic snow shovel and hockey stick to carve a roughly 6-foot-tall, 25-foot-deep tunnel of snow from his house to his and his fiance’s cars.

Marcel Landry, of Summerside in Prince Edward Island, said the area was hit with the worst snowstorm he has ever seen over Valentine’s Day weekend.

The storm — which also registered hurricane force winds, according to Landry — dumped nearly three feet of snow on Summerside, on top of the snow the town had already received this winter.

By that Monday, the view outside of packed snow led Landry to want to start digging out.

“We had been in the house since Saturday evening and I knew we’d be in the house a little while longer so I thought, why not get a head start with shoveling,” Landry said. “I could have not done it, but it was more fun to build a tunnel.”

Landry spent the next six hours Monday digging the tunnel, using a hockey stick from his basement to break the ice and then a semi-broken plastic shovel to move the snow.

“My steel shovels were out in the shed that was also buried by snow,” he said.

Landry relied on his fiancée, who was inside cooking, he said, to help him navigate where to dig.

“I was coming in every now and then to get her to use the car keys to beep the horn and I’d go back in the tunnel to listen and see a light flashing and know in which direction to dig and then I’d probe the hockey stick to see if I was getting close as the horn got louder,” he said. “Finally I found the first car, 25 feet in.”

Landry continued to dig the tunnel Tuesday but did not make as much progress because of all the attention his work was getting from his neighbors.

“Everybody wanted to see it,” he said.

By Wednesday, friends were able to come over and help Landry finally excavate the two cars. The only problem was that there was another pile of snow behind the cars, left over from snow plows and the snowstorm itself.

“We just got the cars out on the 21st, last Saturday, after almost a whole week of shoveling and having fun in the snow,” Landry said.

Landry says his tunnel is still standing but a bit diminished, due again to Mother Nature. The fifth-grade teacher, who also had the whole week off of school due to the snow, says that when you live in Canada you have to make the best of the winter.

“There’s not a whole lot you can do with it so you just have to make the best of it,” Landry said. “Living in Canada this kind of weather is to be expected. It’s a little extreme but what can you do.”

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