9 Things We Learned from the Christmas Ice Storm: Michael's essay
Nine things we learned from the great Christmas ice storm and tree fall: 1) No Canadian over the age of 11 looks good wearing ear muffs. It doesn't matter the material, the design, the cost. Canadians wearing ear muffs look irretrievably goofy. Naturally we have to dress for the winter weather. But that doesn't mean we have to wear...
Nine things we learned from the great Christmas ice storm and tree fall:
1) No Canadian over the age of 11 looks good wearing ear muffs.
It doesn't matter the material, the design, the cost. Canadians wearing ear muffs look irretrievably goofy. Naturally we have to dress for the winter weather. But that doesn't mean we have to wear children's clothes. After all, Canada invented the toque so we wouldn't go around looking goofy in ear muffs and hat flaps.
2) The indifference of a natural weather crisis is absolute and overwhelming.
Why one street or block of streets is plunged into heartless darkness while the houses on the next street over glow in warmth and light is a riff on the ancient question "Why me, Lord?" And the ancient answer, of course, "Why not?"
3) The coping skills of ordinary people are acute and effective when called upon.
People walking on the road because sidewalks are impassable exude a kind of proprietary confidence. If the heat is off, families sleep in the living room near the fireplace. Or they move into city-operated warming centres. People continue to go to work, care for their families, watch over each other.
4) An ice storm turns a neighborhood into a community.
People who are ordinarily nodding acquaintances on the street become friends helping friends; moving and piling tree branches, chopping sidewalk ice, offering food and a place to warm up. In 1998, the Montreal ice storm saw volunteers carrying hot food up flights of dead elevator apartments to seniors who couldn't get out. Nasty weather seems to bring people together in a way that no other shared experience does.
5) Sometimes, governments matter.
Sometimes governments are the only things that matter. Sometimes public servants are precisely --- that. Servants of the public. Private enterprise was nowhere to be found along the dark streets and in the freezing houses of the country's Money City. The Fraser Institute didn't clear away dangerous branches. The National Citizens' Coalition didn't fix the subways. That was all done by public workers, most of whom belong to unions.
6) People instinctively have a way of knowing the difference between an emergency and an inconvenience.
Emergency is when food, water and phone run out and you can't reach your parents in their 40th floor apartment. An emergency is when the power goes off in a veterans' hospital and staff wrestle the auxiliary generators into effective operation. Inconvenience is when your cell phone dies or you have to put the contents of the fridge in the trunk of your car.
7) If one is dumb enough to put one's passport in one's washing machine, one should not search out a replacement the day before New Year's Eve at the tail end of an ice storm.
Hundreds of the storm-tossed weave dreams of hot sun and enlivening warmth and descend in great numbers on the Passport Office. Take a lunch and a book.
8) There can be beauty in anything -- even damage.
The ice-covered fallen branches lend a crystalline magic to darkened streets. The squeals of children hauling fallen branches or sliding on their stomachs down icy driveways are as melodic as a Tchaikovsky symphony, reinforcing the idea of imperturbability.
9) A driving bitter, storm makes people stop and think.
About themselves in their world and about others in the wider world. More than one person said to me with a quiet intensity, imagine those poor people in the Syrian refugee camps.
Indeed.
Imagine.
1) No Canadian over the age of 11 looks good wearing ear muffs.
It doesn't matter the material, the design, the cost. Canadians wearing ear muffs look irretrievably goofy. Naturally we have to dress for the winter weather. But that doesn't mean we have to wear children's clothes. After all, Canada invented the toque so we wouldn't go around looking goofy in ear muffs and hat flaps.
2) The indifference of a natural weather crisis is absolute and overwhelming.
Why one street or block of streets is plunged into heartless darkness while the houses on the next street over glow in warmth and light is a riff on the ancient question "Why me, Lord?" And the ancient answer, of course, "Why not?"
3) The coping skills of ordinary people are acute and effective when called upon.
People walking on the road because sidewalks are impassable exude a kind of proprietary confidence. If the heat is off, families sleep in the living room near the fireplace. Or they move into city-operated warming centres. People continue to go to work, care for their families, watch over each other.
4) An ice storm turns a neighborhood into a community.
People who are ordinarily nodding acquaintances on the street become friends helping friends; moving and piling tree branches, chopping sidewalk ice, offering food and a place to warm up. In 1998, the Montreal ice storm saw volunteers carrying hot food up flights of dead elevator apartments to seniors who couldn't get out. Nasty weather seems to bring people together in a way that no other shared experience does.
5) Sometimes, governments matter.
Sometimes governments are the only things that matter. Sometimes public servants are precisely --- that. Servants of the public. Private enterprise was nowhere to be found along the dark streets and in the freezing houses of the country's Money City. The Fraser Institute didn't clear away dangerous branches. The National Citizens' Coalition didn't fix the subways. That was all done by public workers, most of whom belong to unions.
6) People instinctively have a way of knowing the difference between an emergency and an inconvenience.
Emergency is when food, water and phone run out and you can't reach your parents in their 40th floor apartment. An emergency is when the power goes off in a veterans' hospital and staff wrestle the auxiliary generators into effective operation. Inconvenience is when your cell phone dies or you have to put the contents of the fridge in the trunk of your car.
7) If one is dumb enough to put one's passport in one's washing machine, one should not search out a replacement the day before New Year's Eve at the tail end of an ice storm.
Hundreds of the storm-tossed weave dreams of hot sun and enlivening warmth and descend in great numbers on the Passport Office. Take a lunch and a book.
8) There can be beauty in anything -- even damage.
The ice-covered fallen branches lend a crystalline magic to darkened streets. The squeals of children hauling fallen branches or sliding on their stomachs down icy driveways are as melodic as a Tchaikovsky symphony, reinforcing the idea of imperturbability.
9) A driving bitter, storm makes people stop and think.
About themselves in their world and about others in the wider world. More than one person said to me with a quiet intensity, imagine those poor people in the Syrian refugee camps.
Indeed.
Imagine.