I don't remember the Canadian mounds of snow taking so much time to melt
Salt content is probably also a significant factor. At least here in Ottawa the roads are very heavily salted. You need to salt much heavier to melt ice at -30C than at -10C.
I have never seen a pile so high, we have many smaller piles scattered throughout our cities: every parking lot has one, the parking lane of most roads becomes places for snow piles, just outside of town you can see fields of small piles. The snow that is actually removed from the roads, I assume they spread that out into smaller piles as well.
Those pictures of loaders on top of huge piles of snow seems particularly dangerous.