An Ajax teacher with a large social media following went viral over the weekend when she posted a video online showing a massive pile of snow at the foot of her neighbour’s driveway following last week’s winter storm.

Joanna Johnson first posted the video to TikTok and Twitter on Saturday afternoon, saying she doesn’t usually make TikTok’s while angry, but when she saw the base of her neighbour’s driveway, she felt like she needed to share it.

“I got up this morning to a huge snow dump; fine, that’s no big deal. And I spent two, three hours shoveling our driveway. The plow comes by, we even take care of that; it was about two feet high, whatever, we can take it,” she said in the video, which now has over 600,000 views on TikTok.

“But then I saw my neighbour’s driveway and the bottom of his driveway and the sense of injustice is too thick, so I’m making this TikTok.”

The video went on to show the pile of snow, which Johnson estimated was around five feet high and at least 10 feet wide, going from the base of the driveway out onto the road.

Johnson, who has over two million TikTok followers, says her neighbour had already woken up early that morning to clear his driveway and drive his wife, a nurse, to a local hospital.

Plows came by later in the morning, creating the massive snow drift and blocking his driveway, according to Johnson.

“It was covering maybe 60 per cent [of the driveway]. So what we could do, because he did get home eventually, is we could carve out a little bit to kind of go around it on one edge of the driveway,” Johnson told CP24.

“I told him to stay out as long as he could so maybe it could be resolved before, but eventually he was able to get his car in.”

Johnson said her neighbour called the Town of Ajax twice that morning to get the issue resolved, but nothing had been done by the afternoon.

Christie McLardie, Manager of Public and Strategic Affairs for Ajax sent an emailed statement to CP24, saying with rare weather events, there are unique challenges.

“It may take plows multiple passes to fully clear areas. The matter is something staff would have followed up on if we received the request to assess from the homeowner. Town workers cleared the snow within two hours of notification,” the statement wrote.

“The drivers are doing a better job on corner lots but there are always going to be some situations that require follow up especially after a 16-hour snow fall. The Town’s operations department will assess and prioritize extreme cases as we don’t provide windrow clearing as a service.”

A few hours after the video was posted to Twitter, Ajax Mayor Shaun Collier replied to it directly, saying: “While the Town does not clear windrows, staff will follow up on unintended issues like this, if advised.”

Johnson says she messaged the mayor back with her street address, and by Saturday evening, the snow pile had been cleared.

“Within two hours, they had sent a pickup truck with a plow on the front to fix the situation. I went out and thanked the guy for coming and said I really appreciate it and then they took care of it.”

Johnson says she was struck by the response the video received online, with many other Ajax residents chiming in about their streets and driveways that weren’t properly cleared.

“People were sending me these insane pictures, and I know that in Vaughan, for example, they passed legislation in order to clear the windrows, right? And so I reached out to a couple of councillors and I'm having a few conversations and the mayor said that we can have a meeting as well,” Johnson said.

“If I were the mayor of Ajax, and I see this big uproar about it – and we have a lot of older citizens in Ajax just like everywhere else, everybody's getting older – I wouldn't want my 60-year-old, 70-year-old parent having to deal with the bottom of the driveway. I think it's dangerous.”

Johnson says she hopes her video can serve as an example of how social media can help bring people together and spark conversations to bring about needed change.

“How many people are we employing? Is it enough? Are you giving them enough time to do the job? Are you expecting too much from each individual person? I mean, all of these things, to me, are conversation points that should be had and what I don't get is why they're not being heard more on social media,” she said.

“Isn’t social media the perfect avenue to say what you need and to give your opinion? If you're going to talk to your constituents about what they want, this is it – this is the template for that.”