Ice Storm Christmas

On Saturday, December 21 the girls and Blake and I went to a Christmas carolling party at a friend’s house. We sang lots of old-fashioned Christmas carols (the ones they don’t sing at school because there’s too much Christmas in them) and drank wine and talked about the coming storm. “Charge your phones,” I said, “make sure you have milk and bread!”

“Is it going to be all that bad?” My friends moved here from England just over a year ago — they weren’t here for the ice storm in Ottawa and Quebec back in 1998.

“It could be nothing, or it could be a few days without power,” I said.

By the time we left it was raining, cold hard rain which was starting to freeze on the ground. Blake walked us home and went out again to meet some friends at a pub. I plugged my phone in, made sure my computer was charged, tucked the girls in and headed to bed with The Sea-Captain’s Wife.

Sunday, December 22

When we woke up the power was out but the house was still warm. I lit some candles and boiled a saucepan of water for tea. I shuffled to the gym and back, and the power came back on around 10:30. Easy!

The city was covered in ice, part of the subway was shut down and people were being advised not to go out if they didn’t need to, but Delphine and I had tickets for the Sing-Along Messiah. When we heard at around 11:00 that Massey Hall was open and the Sing-Along Messiah was on, we still weren't sure whether to go or not.

My friends who were going to come with us decided not to go --- they told a very long story about a branch in their driveway and ice on their car and the subway might not be running and it would be hard and they’d rather just not bother. That was disappointing and we thought about staying home too, but we decided that an adventure of any kind would be preferable to staying cooped up at home being sullen.

Waiting for the bus, a lady shuffled towards us with unkemped hair and flushed skin, sprinkling rock salt from a gallon jug on the sidewalk ahead of her. “The subway isn’t running from Eglinton to Bloor,” she said. “No trains! They’re running shuttle buses!” Again we thought about giving up, but decided to forge ahead.

At Yonge Street three shuttle buses drove past, each too crammed to pick anyone up. A small CBC TV crew was shooting some B-roll of people giving up; Delphine wanted to be interviewed for TV but they found someone less hopeful.

Finally I decided to work around the Yonge Street problem altogether by catching the number 14 bus over to the University-Spadina line. The number 14 was diverting from its usual route because of branches on the roads, too, but it was only a twenty minute ride to Glencairn

The subway train we caught at Glencairn was the Hobbit train, which pretty much made the whole trip worthwhile. We got to Dundas station ten minutes before show time and didn’t miss a single note. Dame Emma Kirkby sang. (I wonder how she enjoyed it.) There might have been a bit of a trainwreck in the Amen fugue, but we pulled it together with lots of help from Ivars. Delphine had a good time and she’s starting to learn the choruses and sing along. All in all, going was absolutely the right choice.

After the sing-along we wandered the mall with Janet, who had joined us for Messiah, and then met Blake and Cordelia for dinner. We ate at Mr Greenjeans, our favourite mall restaurant. After a lot of food we went home and noticed that it was very dark on our block; the power had just gone off again.

Monday, December 23

The lights were still out Monday morning. I was supposed to go grocery shopping for Christmas dinner ingredients, but the grocery store was closed. I’m actually not sure what we did all day; cooking and washing dishes, tending to candles. I wrapped Blake’s Christmas gifts in the basement by the light of a single candle. I spent a lot of time checking the @TorontoHydro Twitter account. The girls and Blake decorated their gingerbread houses, which they had cleverly baked the day before the power went out.

At 8:45 pm on Monday, after the power had been out for over 24 hours, it was 16.3° Celsius in the house. People kept inviting us over to their house to warm up, and I didn’t realize why until later when I heard that other houses cooled down to 10 degrees and lower within a day. I don’t think there’s any one thing which made our house stay so warm; it’s a combination of factors:

• really small house (about 1200 square foot)
• a layer of rigid foam insulation on the inside of every outside wall (making the house even smaller)
• semi-detached, so one wall of the house is insulated by an entire other house
• protected on the north side by another house which is about three feet away
• newish, small windows
• honeycomb blinds

And finally, we have a gas water heater and a gas stove, so we were able to warm the place up with hot showers and cooking. I'm feeling pretty good about our little house these days.

Tuesday, December 24

On Christmas Eve morning it was 13.4°C when we woke up; it went up to 15.3°C by the end of breakfast. We went out for lunch and to see The Hobbit; when we got home the temperature had gone down to 11.4°C. We lit some candles and made pasta for dinner, and managed to drag the temperature up to 13°C before bed. Blake and I had to stay up later than the girls because of Christmas, but I lit lots of candles and we managed.

Christmas Day

When we woke up on Christmas Day it was 9.3ºC, which is perhaps too cold for comfort. But Christmas, like the show, must go on, so we made tea and breakfast and lit a bunch of candles and opened presents. Lots of books, lots of chocolate and lots of Lego, so satisfactory all ‘round. Oh, and the girls got rubber swords, which they immediately fought over. Of course.

After opening presents we went over to Baba’s house to warm up, do the cryptic, read (me), knit (Delphine), and watch TV (Cordelia). I kept checking Twitter for news about the power, and at around 3:30 I got a text message from a neighbour to say we were back on. Hooray — we could sleep at home!

The biggest conundrum of the no-power Christmas was where, and if, Christmas dinner would happen. Normally I host, and I was thinking about cancelling dinner, but my sister-in-law is the best ever and offered to have it at her place rather than cancel or postpone. So I brought Christmas pudding and cookies, and made Yorkshire puddings to go with the roast beef, and it was delicious and perfect. And the evening ended very satisfactorily, in our own cozy little house.