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 PHOTO: OWEN EGAN |
Staff, students find shelter in the storm
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Janice Paskey Editor, McGill News At first, I had fun. We had four people from NDG come and stay with us. All week I was so smug. I just didn't get it. I thought, the downtown isn't going to lose power. Until you're the one freezing, you don't understand. On Friday I was downtown when all the power went out. I couldn't get any money because there were no working bank machines -- then we lost water. So with a household of six people and no power or water, I started getting worried. We brought out a guitar and cooked fondue and waited it out for two nights. We kept on the move -- friends with a gas stove invited us over for a meal and friends with a fireplace had us over, and I showered at the Westmount Y. By the third day it was getting pretty cold at home. We went to check into the hotel on Lincoln that our guests had gone to, but the power went out there, too, so we went back home. We got out the fondue pot again and started going through the canned goods. At 4 am, the power came back on. Having a week off work was a surprise. People were calling from all over the country, so we embellished for them and got their sympathy. I cleaned out drawers, I made granola, I darned socks. The greater stress now is going to be making up for last week. Overall, I didn't find it that bad, but you felt awful for the people who were really stuck.
Lindsay Bignell We lost power at home in NDG on the first Tuesday, so we decamped for the first few days. There was power on the street behind us on Girouard, and eventually a neighbour and his son were able to hook up half our street by extension cords stretched across the alley, so we had just enough electricity to start our furnaces and get some heat. That neighbour happened to be Louis-Gilles Francoeur, who writes on environmental issues for Le Devoir. Once that was done, we started organizing neighbourhood suppers. Someone had the key to a house whose owner was in Florida. The house had a gas stove, so everyone in the neighbourhood gathered there in the evenings for wine and great food. The joke is that the owner is a Hydro-Québec engineer! He called one night to find a party going on, but said he really didn't mind. I know it's a cliché, but these experiences really helped us forge new relationships with the people living around us. It's a very mixed group, but politics and everything else just went out the window. When we gathered in the evening, one night we'd speak only French and the next night we'd speak English. On the last night we met, we toasted each other with champagne. There were definitely a few tough moments, but overall it was a pleasant experience. In fact, by the end of it, my eight-year-old son was having such a good time at home that he announced he was going to quit school.
Andrew Jones We lost power for about 30 hours between Friday midday and Saturday evening. I work at the Children's Hospital, which never actually closed, so I've been at the hospital pretty much every day. We had generators over there so I had a half day on Friday. I TA for a class on Monday but obviously that didn't happen and I have a seminar class on Wednesday which was cancelled so I just spent more time at the lab. The power outage wasn't too big an inconvenience for me. I came to McGill from New York as an undergraduate, so I'm used to winter, but of course, I've never seen anything like this. I feel bad for international students who recently arrived from fairly summery countries.
Phyllis Heaphy The power was out in our house for 12 days. We were lucky enough to be able to move in with my parents who live downtown and who had only a two-day blackout, so we were fairly comfortable. Nevertheless, I think you experience the feeling of being a refugee because you feel displaced, all your routines are upset, especially if you have children. We did visit our house every couple of days and we had one day when we were really quite frightened because we couldn't find any gasoline stations open and all the food stores were cleared out and you do have a feeling that this could be direct physical hardship. You become concerned about getting enough to eat and will you even be able to move. I also found I was exhausted at the end of each day. We didn't seem to be doing that much, but it's the worry that wears you out and keeps you from being able to concentrate. I feel now as though I've woken up and lost 10 days. It wasn't just the week the University was closed -- the week of January 5 was traumatic all in itself. It was as if some biblical plague had hit the city. Many of us still feel like walking wounded jolting from one thing to the next, and so it's extraordinary to think of those people who came in --leaving their families and despite their own problems -- to make sure that nothing catastrophic happened on campus. Thanks to their efforts, nothing did.
Ian Henderson We were without power for nine days. We camped out at home at first, then stayed at the manse of our local church. After a few days the lights went out there, right after the Sunday service. It was the Epiphany service where the readings include text from Isaiah which says, "For behold the darkness shall cover the earth and gross darkness the people." We moved in with some other friends, and it was a little bit like a party. We got to spend significant quality time with people we love and whom we don't get to see as much as we would like. I'd say the lasting memory for me will be of seeing how neat my community is. In many ways it was a very affirmative experience. We had offers of accommodation from a number of friends and people called us from all over the country. That was a little difficult because the coldest spot in the house was next to the phone and all the people who called expected to get a full description of the situation. Like a good citizen, I had drained the pipes before leaving my house and when we restarted the heating system, there were blockages, so I've had to invest in a new pump. The hardest thing now is preparing for all the new multi-track programs in the Faculty of Arts. At the moment, I'm doing paperwork and adding seven to all the dates.
Gleema Nambiar It was pretty horrific. The power went off here on Friday. My husband, Georges-Emil, is also a McGill student and we were at our computers which crashed, of course. In fact, he hasn't been able to get his back up yet. Our daughter was at the babysitter's, who had power, so we went exploring shelters. We called the city and were told to try the Eaton Centre so we walked down there and arrived with soaking feet. It looked quite decent -- spacious with lots of cots and the people treated us well, but there was a lot of noise from ice hitting the glass roof. Before too long ice started crashing through the roof and glass was falling on the escalators and it just got worse and worse as the evening progressed. Around 10 p.m. a bus came to move us to another shelter and ice started falling onto the roof of the bus! They took us to Place Ville Marie where a shelter had been set up on the 32nd floor. It was really posh and there were only about 50 of us at first. But more and more people started to come and by 1 a.m. we were packed in like sardines. There were some older people around us who were quite ill, but I don't think they were paying much attention to hygiene at that point. The volunteers were overwhelmed by the numbers. We stayed there that night, but I was really afraid of catching something. The next day we went downstairs to have a coffee and I got talking to a fellow who said he had booked a hotel room at the Westin. He was about to cancel his reservation because his power had come back on at home. So we got his room -- at a corporate rate -- and picked up the baby and went to the hotel. The next day the power went out at the hotel, but, fortunately, by then ours was back on so we were able to go home.
Karen Diaz I lost power Tuesday night. I had my grandmother and the son of friends staying with us because they had lost their power. On Wednesday, we drove in from the West Island to check into a hotel On the way, my granny decided she wanted to go stay with family in Toronto. We drove her to the station where it took me an hour to get her a ticket because there were so many people trying to get out. She didn't make it to Toronto because all the trains were cancelled and she had to wait at the station for five hours for us to pick her up. On Friday, the electricity went out at the hotel, so we walked back from Guy Street to McGill to get the car. We saw a tree just miss falling on a person and a car. I stood freezing outside the Bronfman Building for almost two hours waiting for security to come and open the building, and watched people and cars rushing by. What a mess! Things seemed to be out of control in the city. We finally got back to the hotel to get my family. There was no elevator, and my kids and sister-in- law were on the 17th floor. It took three hours to get home to Kirkland, but we did have power. When we lost it again, I broke down and cried. It was a good thing we didn't have to work until Monday, because by the end of it all, I was just drained. Everybody has their own boiling point, I guess. My grandmother is 84 years old and she was a real trouper. Right now I just feel blah but I know I'm going to have to work much faster. I always thought that the deadlines and pressures I had at McGill were stressful, but coping with these problems was something else.
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