On a cold January morning in 1999, former Toronto mayor Mel Lastman enlisted the Canadian army for a historic battle against Mother Nature.

The city had been under siege for over a week after the first snow emergency was declared on Jan. 4 when around 38 centimetres of snow crippled the city.

As the snow slowly accumulated in the days after the first storm, Toronto was hit with another surprise attack on Jan. 14.

The city woke up to an additional 27 centimetres, burying Torontonians under a metre of snow that had accumulated in the time between the two storms.

The already narrow roads were made tighter with vehicles parked on both sides and mountainous ruts down the centre.

Lastman saw roads narrowed by the snowbanks and thought to himself: “How is an ambulance supposed to get through this?” he said in a Star interview in 2009.

Wasting no time, Lastman called a second snow emergency, and made the tough decision to call in the cavalry.

Four hundred soldiers flooded into the city armed with shovels, ready to take on the snow in tanks that rolled through the downtown streets.

“We arranged it so that senior citizens could go around the corner to get milk, so that people could get on the TTC,” he said in the interview.

David Gunn, the head of the transit commission at the time, knew the risk Toronto would be ridiculed.

“People made fun of it, but on the other hand we used them,” Gunn said in 2009.

With the soldiers, came some 100 trucks and volunteers from Prince Edward Island to clear the congestion. Lastman repaid their outstanding work with a favor: he got them all tickets to a Toronto Maple Leafs game that weekend.

In 2009 Lastman was asked if he would do it again, given the avalanche of mockery that was heaped upon Toronto as a result of his actions.

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“Would I do it again? You’re darn right I would!”

With files from Jaspreet Tambar and The Canadian Press