‘It’s always in the backs of our minds’

BY ELYSE AMEND

elyse.amend@transcontinental.ca

Exactly 10 years ago on this day, 1.4 million Quebecers were without power. The ice rain that began falling four days earlier tore down branches and entire trees, and made hydro towers crumble under its weight. About 1,500 Hydro-Québec teams were on the ground on Jan. 9, 1998 working to restore power to the province’s homes and businesses.

Just about 100 millimetres was counted when the ice rain stopped falling that night. Over three million Quebecers – or about half the province’s population – were without electricity at the height of the storm. Some would have their power restored within the week; others would have to wait much longer.

While a lot can change in 10 years, almost anyone who lived through the 1998 Ice Storm can recall a number of memories almost as if they were frozen in time.

“One thing I remember was that it was so quiet and I could hear the branches covered in ice falling and crashing on the ground,” said Baie d’Urfé resident Pam Martin. “I’d never heard that before.”

Martin and her family were featured in the Jan. 14, 1998 issue of The Chronicle in an article about how they were coping with the storm. At the time, she was a stay-at-home mom and her husband, Dave, was a chemical engineer at Ultramar. Their daughters Jillian, 14, and Kerri, 12, were both students at Queen of Angels Academy in Dorval.

“Except for the rain, the day seemed quite normal,” Martin said, remembering the storm’s beginning on Monday, Jan. 5, 1998. “Tuesday morning we awoke to no power.”

The family spent two more nights in their own beds, but their home became too cold by Thursday morning, and they moved into the family room and camped out by the fireplace. They also spent most of the days at the emergency shelter set up in the Baie d’Urfé curling club, where Martin and some volunteers worked in the kitchen preparing meals.

“I think on most of the evenings we served over 200 meals,” Martin remembered.

While former Baie d’Urfé Mayor Anne Myles was dealing with bronchitis during the storm, she had little time to rest.

“The doctor kept saying, you’ve got to go to bed. Well, sure, how are you going to go to bed?” Myles said, adding what she remembers most about the storm is the way the community pulled together. “The first thing that comes to mind is the fantastic response from all our citizens. Baie d’Urfé is essentially a volunteer-run municipality and everyone just rallied around to help and do what they could.”

With the sheer number of trees in the town, Baie d’Urfé was one of the worst hit, especially in the industrial park.

“I remember being absolutely devastated seeing all the broken trees. It was like seeing so many human beings with broken limbs. It was a very sad sight,” Myles said.

While there is still some evidence from the Ice Storm at the Morgan Arboretum in Ste. Anne de Bellevue, forest operations manager John Watson said most of the damages have “come back nicely.” Watson spent most of January 1998 taking calls from concerned homeowners and advising municipalities on how to take care of fallen and damaged trees.

“That was actually, to me, probably the biggest part of the whole thing: helping the community,” he said, adding distinguishing between reputable and inexperienced tree services was one of the biggest issues. “When there are, all of a sudden, 15 new tree services on the island, you really have to worry.”

The Martins – who consider themselves lucky – got their power back permanently on Jan. 10 in the evening, five days after the storm began. Since then, Martin’s daughters have moved away from home for school. Dave is now a teacher in John Abbott College’s engineering technology department, and Pam works in a home décor store in Hudson twice a week. For her, some images of the Ice Storm are still very vivid.

“The one thing I remember from the ice storm was that I was driving home one night from the curling club [and] it was so dark because all the street lights were off […] I felt all alone in the world,” she said. “I still remember how quiet and eerie it was outside. The only sound was that of the trees and branches full of ice hitting the ground.”

As for Myles, while she said municipalities are now better prepared for such emergencies, memories of the Ice Storm come back every time the weather turns.

“(The Ice Storm) was just such a bolt out of the blue,” she said. “Now, it’s always there. Every time there’s a storm, it’s always in the backs of our minds.”