‘Snow Angels’ Platform Connects Canadians With Elderly in Need of Shovelling Help

The platform creator says many Canadians have experienced the joy of shovelling snow for an elderly neighbour.

A man shovels a path to his house in Fort Erie, Ont., on Nov. 19, 2022. The Canadian Press/Nick Iwanyshyn

Lincoln McCardle jokes that his platform connecting good Samaritans with elderly people in need of shovelling help is almost like a “dating site.”

“But instead of going on a date, you’re arranging to shovel someone’s snow,” he told The Epoch Times.

Many Canadians have felt the joy of helping others by shovelling snow for an elderly neighbour. Mr. McCardle, of London, Ont., has created a rapidly growing platform called Snow Angels to help more Canadians feel that joy.

It has gone from being a local initiative to connecting thousands of elderly and disabled with people looking to help from coast-to-coast. Many municipalities have joined, spurring Mr. McCardle and the web developers who have worked on it pro bono to refine the platform this year with dashboards for each city involved.

How It Started

You might imagine Mr. McCardle came across the idea naturally enough by helping his own elderly neighbour. That’s true, but there’s a twist.

His elderly neighbour was upset with him for shovelling her walkway. She gave him a scolding because she paid for a shovelling service and if he did it for free, her money would be wasted.

“I thought, you know, I bet I can throw a snowball and hit 100 people who would love to have their laneway shovelled right now,” Mr. McCardle said. When he went inside after shovelling that day in 2015, he started Twitter and Facebook accounts called Snow Angels London and he would send out reminders to people to check on their neighbours and keep an eye out for anyone needing shovelling help.

Local web development company Simalam took notice. Its developers were looking to do some charitable work and they pitched the idea to Mr. McCardle that they could work together to make Snow Angels London into a platform connecting “snow angels” with those who need them.

It uses Google Maps, showing a snow flake in the general area of each user. Users can message each other and make arrangements, including giving their precise address to a snow angel ready to help.

Thousands of volunteers stepped up in London, including high school students looking to fulfill their volunteer hours for school. There were many more volunteers than people requesting help, so everybody who asked got a snow angel.

Barrie was the first city to contact Mr. McCardle wanting to join. So, Snow Angels London became Snow Angels Canada, and Barrie residents started giving and receiving help through the same web platform.

Barrie launched it to the local media, sent out fliers, went to high schools and seniors centres and, within a couple of months, Barrie’s program was bigger than London’s.

“What’s the next thing that happens? I start getting emails from Collingwood, Orangeville, Markham, Stouffville, you know all those places,” Mr. McCardle said.

He’s also had groups join all across Canada, including a church in Nova Scotia and a neighbourhood group in Victoria, B.C.

“I just say to them, go ahead. The system is there, the platform is in place. As long as you promote it locally ... the system is going to work for you,” he said.

The goal is to have at least one volunteer for each person needing help, so it’s important to promote it to both groups of people, he added.

Bringing Communities Together

In addition to helping the elderly, Snow Angels has had the side-effect of bringing communities closer together, Mr. McCardle said.

“Old people like me always talk about the ‘good old days,’” he said. “You always knew who needed help, or if someone’s spouse died, someone would deliver meatloaf to them and stuff like that. That’s kind of the situation we find our selves getting back to a little bit with this program.”

Because the platform runs independently for the most part—Snow Angels doesn’t formally recruit volunteers or manage the snow shovelling operations in any way, it just provides a place for people to connect—Mr. McCardle has only heard a little through emails he has received about the effect his program is having.

He said he sometimes gets emails saying something like, “Jeffrey was just here, and he did such a great job. I made it to my appointment in time, can you please thank him for me?”

The privacy of each user is protected on the platform, so Mr. McCardle can’t actually find Jeffrey and thank him, but he loves hearing the impact snow angels are having.

He said he has heard of someone posting on a community Facebook page, “I’m going to go out and shovel for a bunch of people in our neighbourhood this Saturday if anyone wants to join me, meet at the school at 10 a.m.”

“And so what you’ve also gotten is a group of like 10 strangers who happen to live in the same area all meeting and going out to shovel, and they end up going out for cocoa afterward,” Mr. McCardle said.

Winter can be isolating for everyone, and especially the elderly, he said, and this program brings people together in the middle of the lonely season.

He has heard of people driving an hour to provide help to someone in another town, he has heard of people travelling all over their city to help people in different neighbourhoods.

One of his favourite stories is of a volunteer who ended up needing help himself for some time after an injury. He got help for a couple months and then went back to volunteering.

Full Circle

One experience illustrated for Mr. McCardle how far his program has come.

When he was first looking to start it up in 2015, he contacted the City of Hamilton because it had a similar program running. A lady there told him he would never be able to do it without more resources because it took two full-time city staff to run it.

Then, four or five moths ago, he heard from Hamilton. The city decided to shut its program down and join Snow Angels. It was then that he  realized the program really had come “full circle.”

Mr. McCardle called Snow Angels “an experiment in kindness.”

“If we gave people an opportunity to help someone, would they? And it seems like mostly the answer is ‘yes’.”