Giving Thanks, in a Time of Raining Ice

An editorial, at the National Post (Toronto):

Late Sunday night, in central Toronto, a team of hydro workers did something very un-Christmassy: They declined a gift. Specifically, a gift of a fine bottle of wine, offered by a homeowner (known to a member of this newspaper’s editorial board) whose electric power the hydro team had just restored.

“If we took a bottle from everyone who’d offered us one tonight, we’d have a truck full of them” a worker said, laughing. “We’re just doing our job.” He and his colleagues then drove off, to continue the tiring and dangerous job of sifting wires from branches, and getting southern Ontario back on the power grid after Saturday night’s ice storm.

Christmas is a time for giving thanks. And these men and women — many of whom are giving up their holidays in the effort to provide Ontarians with warm homes in which to celebrate their own family gatherings — certainly deserve our appreciation.

Canadian cities and provinces build drainage system for rains, and buy plows and trucks for snow. But sometimes, mother nature simply overwhelms us. Nothing can stop a river from overflowing its banks, as we saw in Alberta this past summer. Nothing can stop freezing drizzle from coating tree branches, and nothing can stop those overburdened branches from crashing into whatever lies below.

Of course Toronto’s situation pales in comparison with the Alberta floods, and the unbelievable damage inflicted by the 1998 ice storm in Quebec. But it is reassuring to see, time and again, that Canadians will always come together in the face of adversity...

Continue reading.

And see, "Five killed by carbon monoxide as 220000 face freezing eastern Canada winter without power."