Ice Storm (19 page)

Sophie’s throat was raw – she’d been screaming practically non-stop since Alice began to skate. What a performance! Uncle Pete hugged Maman as tears ran down their cheeks. Guillaume had Sébastien on his shoulders so he could throw a bouquet of flowers onto the ice. Rachel and her mom were looking kind of awestruck. Only Mrs. Hartley was still sitting. She wasn’t cheering or clapping or anything, but she was wearing a satisfied smile.

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“Well Alice, still want to take a year off?”
Mr. Osborne asked Alice gloomily at their celebratory dinner at a nearby restaurant. “Now that you’re the star we always thought you could be?”

Her dad frowned at Mr. Osborne. “I know, I know,” said Mr. O, putting his hands up. “No pressure. But, my girl, you certainly went out with a bang!”

Alice just smiled. “Don’t worry, Mr. O. I’ll be back.”

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The whole family went back
to Alice’s house. It was too late to go back to Saint-Hyacinthe, so they were having a sleepover. Anyway, they had plans. Sébastien was going to show his first-ever home movie. He was calling it a World Premiere, so Alice and Sophie dressed up like they were walking down the red carpet or something. Alice put mousse in Sébastien’s dark hair, making it all spiky.

“There,” she said. “Now you look like a crazy movie director.”

Alice put a bag of popcorn in the microwave. Dad turned on the brand-new television, purchased just in time for the premiere. They all gathered in the living room. Sébastien put his video in the new
vcr
.

The movie started with a dark screen. Then Sébastien appeared, all dressed in black.

“The
loup-garou
is a shape-shifter. Mild-mannered human most of the time, at night he changes into a huge, fierce wolf. A monster. The wolf is mindless, destroying everything in its path. When it changes back to human, it has no memory of the horrors it has inflicted,” he intoned in a spooky voice as he raised his arms over his head.

“I am not afraid of the
loup-garou!”
he shouted. The onscreen Sébastien made a fierce face and struck a pose. Alice covered her mouth with her hands and tried not to look at Soph. She wouldn’t laugh, she wouldn’t! Then the rain started.

The family was silent as they relived the storm. Sébastien had chronicled everything. He must have been carrying his video camera the whole time. He had shots of the cows bawling in the barn and of the Mennonite hand-milkers who helped. He had shots of his chart, and of the parade of neighbours who followed the travelling generator and of the lineups for the shower. Aunt Evie smiled as she saw herself organizing all the women in the kitchen to cook casseroles together.

He had filmed the wreckage of the sugar bush. He’d interviewed some of the kids at school, even some teachers, about their experiences. There were lots of stories to tell; the power had been out for thirty-three days. He even had shots of the shelter at the high school in Saint-Hyacinthe, bringing back strong memories for Alice.

But mostly, he had shots of Sophie. Sophie driving the tractor, Sophie milking the cows, Sophie feeding Mélisande, Sophie delivering the hay, Sophie hauling water, Sophie cleaning the barn, Sophie hooking up the generator. Sophie couldn’t believe it. Her brother had made her look like the strongest, most capable person on earth.

When the film ended, there was silence in the living room. The movie had everything, all the laughter and all the tears. None of them would ever forget. Aunt Evie was crying, just a little, and trying to pretend she wasn’t. Dad clapped his hands.

“Bravo!” he cried. “Well done!”

It broke the ice. Everybody started to talk at once, about Sébastien’s cleverness, at the sneaky shots he’d been able to get when no one knew he was there, about the scary music he’d found for the soundtrack. They talked a lot about the film. They didn’t talk about the ice storm. They couldn’t. It
was
the monster. It had tried to destroy them. It had transformed their lives, made all of them different. But it hadn’t beaten them.

Alice reached for Sophie’s hand. They’d done it. They’d faced the monster, and won.

Author’s Note

There are two kinds of disasters. The first kind
happens all at once, like an earthquake or a tsunami. Life changes in an instant. The second kind happens more slowly. It begins as an annoyance, like a leaky faucet. You try to fix the drip, but don’t worry when you can’t. The drip turns into a steady stream. No matter, it runs down the drain. But soon the water is pouring, gushing out of the faucet. Now you worry. As water pours onto the floor you finally realize you are in the middle of a disaster.

Some people think that slow disasters are worse than fast disasters. That’s because it takes us longer to recognize that we are in trouble, and when we do, we think we have time to fix it. But we don’t. A disaster is still a disaster, no matter the speed at which it occurs.

The Weather

Slow disasters are often weather-related. Weather, so far, is one thing that human beings cannot control.

The ice storm of 1998 started in the sunny Gulf of Mexico. Warm, moist air floated over the tropical sea until it hit the cool edge of Alabama. The cool landmass forced the warm air to rise. Clouds formed; rain fell. The clouds moved north. It rained in Tennessee, in Kentucky, and in West Virginia. It rained in Ohio. But in Ohio, the clouds hit a wall: the Great Lakes.

It was January, winter in Canada. The warm air from the south met the cold air in the north and there was a great crash.

To escape, the warm air rose again. Clouds formed; rain formed. But it was too cold to rain. The raindrops froze into ice crystals. The crystals fell through the layer of warm air, melting back to rain. The instant the supercooled raindrops landed, they froze. They froze on the houses, on the roads, on the power lines and the trees. And that’s how a whole city froze solid.

News Sources

A great deal has been written about the ice storm. For my research, I read many newspaper articles from old copies of the
Montreal Gazette,
the
Ottawa Citizen
and the
Toronto Star.
The ice storm was breaking news for days. I also spoke to people who lived through the storm, and I visited the sugar bush and the Montreal parks that still show terrible damage from the ice. Online, you can see YouTube videos and listen to people telling about their ice storm experiences.

Want to know more, or see some pictures of the storm? There are two very good books you can check out, both edited by Mark Abley.
The Ice Storm: An Historic Record of Photographs 1998
is full of exciting, scary and heartwarming pictures. Some of the photos inspired scenes in this book.
Stories From the Ice Storm
is a collection of personal experiences. There’s a whole section of stories written by kids who survived the storm. Look carefully, and you might see some ice storm stories written by your favourite authors in this book.

Whose Fault Is It? The Politics of a Disaster

When bad things happen, people have a tendency to want to blame somebody or something for all the trouble. But, the weather isn’t anybody’s fault.

Hydro-Québec was blamed. They were blamed for building a system dependent on only five power lines. They were blamed for not having an emergency plan and for taking so long to fix the downed lines. The fact that Hydro-Québec had also brought great wealth to the province by selling power to others while keeping rates low for Québecers was forgotten.

The Québec government was blamed for waiting three days before asking the federal government for help.

Even scientists were blamed, because they hadn’t stopped climate change.

But all that blame didn’t help get the power back on.

Community

The other side of blame is praise. During the storm a wonderful sense of community developed, and from that came many happy stories.

Sixteen thousand Canadian Forces soldiers were part of
Operation Recuperation,
the largest peacetime deployment ever. They checked homes, took people to shelters, worked on the power lines, cleaned up (and recycled) the broken transformers and power lines, and distributed generators and other supplies.

When line technicians arrived in a neighbourhood to restore the power lines, homeowners applauded in the streets. They brought sandwiches, doughnuts and coffee to the workers.

Communities got together and collected winter clothes for the American line technicians who came from the warm south to help. They weren’t used to working in wind chill conditions of -40 degrees Celsius, but it didn’t stop them.

One hundred and forty line technicians from Manitoba drove for thirty-six straight hours to come to help in the Triangle of Darkness. The town where they were stationed flew the Manitoba flag the whole time they were there.

Lots of people contributed their personal skills. Electricians and plumbers manned open-line talk shows over the radio to help people protect their homes from damage. Doctors made house calls. Ham radio operators relayed messages between emergency personnel and hospitals. Pet stores with generators collected tropical fish and “fishsat” them to save their lives. Hairstylists visited shelters, styling hair for free to raise peoples’ spirits.

Volunteers in Toronto created
Project Warmth,
collecting five hundred sleeping bags to send to the freezing people in the Triangle of Darkness.

My favourite storm story comes from a small, very poor village in Mali, Africa. For years, the dairy farmers of this village had benefited from aid from the richer farmers of Québec. When the African villagers heard of the ice
storm, they sent a donation to their Canadian friends.

Storytelling and the
Loup-garou

The Québecois have a rich cultural tradition of stories, songs and dance. The stories traveled from France with the earliest settlers, then changed to fit the needs of the New World, making them uniquely Québecois. Many of the stories are about the
loup-garou.

“Loup-garou”
is the French word for a man who changes into a wolf, or werewolf. However, a
loup-garou
may shift into a big black dog, a cow, a pig or a horse as well. In French Canada, the legend of the
loup-garou
was closely connected to the spiritual beliefs of the people.

If a man did not go to church on Sunday for seven years, or missed communion at Easter, it was believed that he would fall under the spell of the devil and become a
loup-garou.
The punishment lasted for 101 days and nights. During the day, the victim would be frightened and sickly. At night, he was forced to wander as an animal. The spell could be broken if someone recognized the
loup-garou
while in animal form, and was able to pierce it with a knife and draw blood. The victim would immediately become human again. But the curse could only be fully lifted if neither party spoke of it until all 101 days were up.

The other way to become a
loup-garou
was to put on a wolfskin belt. This belt gave the wearer special powers, but at a terrible cost. The curse died if the belt was burned, but so too did the victim.

Stories like these were told to children in old Québec so they would obey their parents. It’s no wonder that Sébastien was frightened!

Maple Syrup

Québec provides 70% of the maple syrup for the whole world. In 1998 there were nearly 28 million maple taps in Québec, and a quarter of them were damaged or destroyed. Experts say that it will take thirty to forty years for production to be restored.

Many believe that the loss of the sugar bush was the greatest of all the losses, because it will take the longest to recover.

Dairy Farming

Dairy farming is a very important occupation in Québec. There are more dairy cows there than in any other province in Canada, and many live on small family farms like Sophie’s.

But only 3% of the people in Canada live on a farm. That means there are a whole lot of us (like me!) who live in cities and don’t know much about farming. Here are some questions that I asked dairy farmers before I wrote this book:

How much milk does a cow give each day?
Cows give about 6 to 8 gallons of milk a day. But it varies. Some cows are better milkers than others, and they can produce up to 12 gallons a day.

What do cows eat?
Cows eat an enormous amount of feed each day. It’s a combination of hay, corn and silage, which is fermented corn or grass. And they drink a lot of water. In fact, the amount of water that a single cow drinks in a year would completely fill the inside of your school bus!

Here’s how to imagine a cow’s daily meal. It’s a big picnic cooler filled with hay, a blue recycling box filled with grain and eight four-litre jugs of water. Could you eat all that?

How can a cow eat that much feed?
A cow has a special stomach with four chambers to help digest the feed. After a cow eats, she regurgitates a ball of partially digested food the size of a golf ball into her mouth, where she chews it about sixty times. Then she swallows it, and brings up another one. This is called “chewing the cud.” A cow chews 30,000 times a day!