On January 9, 1998, downtown Montreal, that by many to be largely immune to the devastating icy retrograde existence of the rest of Western Quebec, Eastern Ontario and Northern New York, succumbed to the darkness. Let me tell you about it.
I was working at a crappy telemarketing firm (which led to a crappy sales career, but I digress). January 9 was a Friday. I knew that I had to work that day even though things were getting chaotic from this storm, because the managers were bastards. I did not expect, though, that we would be let go at noon that day. That was a blessing.
The company was in the Alexis-Nihon corporate tower and I lived on Pine and Clark, so it was one 15-minute bus ride home. I started walking on Atwater to Sherbrooke instead of waiting at de Maisonneuve, just for kicks, I suppose. At the time, there was a tall tree behind a bus shelter. Outside the shelter, an old woman was standing with her umbrella. All trees were incredibly and depressingly laden with very heavy ice; the larger the tree, the greater the amount of ice.This tree might have been forty feet tall under normal circumstances, but this day it was bent over so painfully and so much that it lost about ten to fifteen feet in height. It was straining with the added weight of ice. You really thought of these trees as overworked beasts of burden, or like the slaves that carried the rocks to build the pyramids.
During my walk up the street, I heard a noise. It was difficult to discern, a little like twisting metal or something, but I didn't register it immediately. It was just another background downtown noise as far as I was concerned, but then it got louder. My directional hearing is not superb, but after long seconds I was able to pinpoint the direction of the noise. It was the tree. And the sound was getting even louder. It was the ice and the branches of the tree breaking. Part of the tree's crown was about to break right off and fall...directly on the old woman in front of the shelter.
My heart leapt out of my chest. I was about to witness a woman die painfully, I was sure. I started running towards her and I cried out. At that moment, the tree came down...I was too late, too far away. I could not hear anything else. I was devastated. But the woman was not. Sshe looked up, took a big step back into the shelter, and saved herself. The heavy tree branches fell harmlessly in front of her with a loud crash. I couldn't believe what I saw. I stood there for a full minute, stunned. I finally reached that bus shelter and the bus arrived a few minutes later. I never spoke to the woman.
15 minutes later I was at home. I was living in a 1 1/2 at 25 Pine W. I still had power, as did my entire neighbourhood. "Ice Storm, shmice Shtorm," I thought. "Poor saps living in the wilderness that isn't Montreal. Suckers." I played on the computer for a bit and realized that I hadn't had lunch and that there as nothing to eat, either, so I decided to go to the Quatre Frères 24-hour grocery store to pick something up. To me, this was the benchmark of how things really were. Sure, things were getting worse in Montreal because of the storm, but as long as they were open, everything was fine. It was around the corner from my place. Imagine my shock when I discovered that they were without power and were...CLOSED. As was everything else on that block. It was frightening.
I walked back to my place and on the way was frozen in place. A blackness appeared from the north and east, quickly devouring everything in its path. It sounds as though hell were manifesting itself in Villeray and spreading, but was actually happening was that power was being lost everywhere, and that this power loss was spreading south and west. You could actually SEE stores and apartment buildings lose electricity one by one, then ten by ten. It came closer and closer. I was very spooked, frankly. The wave passed over, and there was no power left around me.
I went back home, and of course, nothing worked. I immediately called my girlfriend. In the middle of the conversation the phone line cut out. I thought that something terrible had happened to her, so I rushed as fast as I could over to her place. Because of the chaos that was gripping the city, a half-hour trip turned into a 2-hour trek. Along the way I encountered soldiers in full gear, with military vehicles dominating Sherbrooke St. Hundreds of people were lined up along the streets to catch overloaded buses that hardly ever came at all. Cars were sliding this way and that way trying to get anywhere but downtown. Ice was falling from skyscrapers and nearly killing people. It was a battle to get to her place, but I finally did it. She was safe and sound, as were her pets, but pretty bored.
The next thing to do was to try to get something to eat. Almost all the restaurants were closed by this time. We finally found a tiny Lebanese place that still had power. The elderly owner was flipping out with the amount of business he was doing. He didn't know what to do, but he did actually start singing and clapping his hands. I suppose it was a win-win; we got fed and he got a week's worth of business in one evening.
Afterwards, he went to see the third member of our trio, Joe. He didn't have any power left, so we ended up all at my crappy studio apartment, which had power again. We had fun, though, as we were all best friends, and more than that, as it turned out. But that's another story of betrayal and shitfulness.
The following evening, Saturday night, I took a walk downtown. It was a ghost town. No lights, nobody except a small group of hapless American guys looking for a good time. I laughed openly at their poor choice of weekend. It was beautiful, though. I have never seen downtown look like this since. It was perfectly calm, except for a few other bewildered Montrealers and unlucky tourists. Moonlight reflected from ice that covered the buildings, giving a strange glow to everything. The placidness was freaky, to tell the truth, but it was still calming to see. It was as though the rural fused with the urban, if only for part of a day.
The Ice Storm truly is something I would live through again, especially since during the whole three weeks of the Ice Storm and its effects, I lost power for about five hours.
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