Illegally-parked moving vans clogged Montreal streets Sunday morning as thousands of tenants moved in and out of buildings across the city.
July 1st marks the annual moving day in Montreal, and this year, it was a scorcher.
Temperatures rose to 33 degrees celsius, and with humidity factored in, it felt more like 44.
“Oh, today is the worst day I have ever had,” said Bryant Richards of All Access Moving company.
Richards, who has worked for three years as a professional mover, found the day’s work to be trying.
“Yesterday was pretty bad, but today is going to be worse because we just started,” Richards said.
André Koral was not looking forward to helping his friend move from Notre-Dame-de-Grâce to Longueuil when he saw the weather forecast.
“I wasn’t too excited, but so far it hasn’t been too bad,” Koral said, sipping water. “The sun isn’t out and there is a breeze.”
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Koral says he has not stopped drinking water since his day started.
“I’ve been drinking water, like, a bottle every five minutes,” Koral said. “You have to keep hydrating and the humidity just sucks the energy out of you.”
Koral’s hard work will be rewarded with beer and pizza, but Urgence-Santé officials warn that alcoholic drinks may cause more harm then good in the extreme heat.
“I would not recommend alcohol intake in heat like this, especially beer,” said Urgence-Santé chief of operations Stephan Gascon. “It will dehydrate you on top of it.”
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Although the heat may be affecting many movers, Gascon says they have not received an influx of calls, and only one call has been related to heat exhaustion.
“Nothing really,” Gascon said. “Only a work-related heat exhaustion [issue] but nothing otherwise came up.”
He says the awareness campaigns for how to operate in hot weather have been successful and the lack of emergency rescues demonstrates that.