"It's Canada. We shouldn't be surprised but sometimes we get caught with our pants down," said Kevin Dwyer, 29, as he shoveled ice off a walkway in downtown Toronto.

The storm working its way across the country hit the western province of Alberta earlier this week, dumped 30 centimetres (1 foot) of snow on Regina, Saskatchewan, and poured ice pellets and freezing rain across southern Ontario Thursday and Friday.

The storm will move on to western Quebec on Saturday, where up to 25 centimetres (10 inches) of snow are expected in Montreal. It will land on Atlantic Canada later in the weekend.

"It is truly nasty. And this is the lull, we're expecting another wave of this misery," said David Phillips, senior climatologist at Environment Canada. "This storm, when it finally goes to the graveyard in the Atlantic, will have affected most of Canada from Alberta right to Newfoundland."

Phillips said the storm system, a vast air mass stretching from the mid-western United States to eastern Ontario, is crawling across the Great Lakes and will make its presence felt for some time.

"It's like a big bully, strutting across the weather map," he said. "The best thing you can say about Canadian weather is that it hits and runs, it doesn't stand around and clobber you. But this system is lumbering. It torments you."

In Toronto, the storm led to school closures and delayed the morning commute as trains were canceled and ice-covered roads made driving treacherous. Falling trees have knocked out power lines, leaving about 30,000 homes in southwestern Ontario without electricity.

"It sucks but what are you going to do?" said one woman, slipping and sliding down an ice-coated Toronto street.

Environment Canada said a year's worth of freezing rain has fallen on Toronto and surrounding areas over the past two days. At the city's main airport, numerous flights were canceled and passengers faced significant delays as snowplows fought to clear runways.

Air Canada scrapped all its North American flights to and from Toronto for the rest of the day due to the weather, and after the airport ran out of de-icing fluid.

In 24 hours, the airport ran through its entire fluid supply - an amount that normally lasts 30 days - as each plane had to be de-iced up to eight times the normal amount.

"It's been the kind of conditions we've never seen before for a sustained period of time," said Pearson airport spokesman Peter Gregg, adding suppliers are shipping in more fluid from as far afield as New Jersey and Chicago.

Adding to the region's woes, snow removal contracts for many Ontario cities ended in March, leaving towns scrambling to deploy snowplows and salt trucks.

"People are not prepared for it and they're also not in the mood for it. It's unfair almost. We've suffered enough," said Phillips.

But at least one part of Canada will be unfazed by the storm when it hits this weekend.

"Half the people will be cheering for a record and half will be bemoaning it," said Rita Anderson, a psychology professor at Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland, which has been battered by heavy snows all winter.

"The Newfoundland perspective on April storms is perhaps different from the rest of the country."

Residents in Canada's easternmost province - who are noted for their sense of humor in the face of adversity - are accustomed to snowstorms as late as May or June.