Since the introduction of the Gregorian calendar, we spend the evening of the last day of December looking toward the next either in celebration of the promise of what is to come or in complete disinterest at just another year passing by us and into another.
Well, it seems, by and large, from the responses received to the article about Y2K, the majority of Sudburians at the time expected the year 1999 to end with a quiet whimper (played out to the sound of fireworks popping, naturally) and not in a horrible bang, accompanied by planes falling out of the sky and technology fighting back, as was “predicted” by “The Simpsons” in that year’s “Treehouse of Horror” Halloween episode (Thank you, Ryan Wildgoose for that pop culture memory).
Ryan, being only eight years old at the time, was not unlike most young people in the “Internet Middle Ages,” and “didn't quite understand all the hysteria and the concerns about computers failing.” His only goal for that day, as with any other New Year’s Eve, was to stay up and usher in the New Year (and new millennium) and observe the pomp and circumstance we have become accustomed to in the New Year’s Rockin’ Eve Era.
With that being said, there were still those who, although they were looking forward to the celebratory aspects of the evening, were still taking precautions on the off-chance that the dire predictions that permeated the conversation over the previous few years bore fruit.
Linda Derkacz wrote that although she, her husband and their friends were excited to take in the festivities along the Toronto waterfront on New Years Eve 1999, they made sure to have “sufficient money out of the bank for the three days…in case banking machines stopped working.” They also “made up a safety kit of water & food for a week's worth.”
The fear of mass transportation issues was a hot topic among many people, as well as the mass media of the time. Fears that included, as Derkacz recalled, “traffic lights might not work,” that “the subway maybe would not run either” therefore causing “the buses [to] be quite packed”.
In fact, they were advised not to rely on the busing in Toronto at all if Y2K issues occurred as the system, it was thought, would not be able to handle any excess capacity.
While some people were wrapped up in the excitement of the coming Year 2000, others considered themselves at the opposite end of the spectrum. Vicki Gilhula wrote in to say that she “was blasé about Y2K” even though “many people were loading up on candles and batteries” all around preparing for the worst. Of course, she and her partner did wish they had flashlights when they got caught in a non-Y2K blackout prior to their New Year’s Eve dinner (which probably caused a few people in the Parry Sound area where they were to think “the end was nigh”).
Gilhula was not alone in those thoughts. As reader Petra Casas recalled, “I remember thinking the whole thing was ridiculous and made zero preparations” unlike some people who “were stockpiling water, and canned goods and ready for the end of the world.”
Casas’ sister on the other hand, who was working in hospital at the time, was well-immersed in the preparations being made within areas of the public sector on the off-chance that a single Y2K-related computer adjustment was missed causing a chain reaction of events. She “often spoke of their plans, which included using megaphones in the stairwells to communicate from one floor to the next, should the power grid shut down.”
All of these emergency preparations undertaken by average citizens, businesses and governments would not have been necessary if it hadn’t been for one thing, that pesky Y2K bug. In order to battle against the fears of and win the “war” on the Y2K bug, armies of IT professionals had the majority of their work redirected to a task that was deemed most important as the 20th century drew to a close: They were tasked within all sectors of governments across the globe as well as every industry to examine every computer program and manually adjust all date entries from two digits to four digits.
Robert Paradis, who was working in IT in the late 1990s, remembers that the time leading up to the end of 1999 was “a cash cow” for those businesses who were contracted to do the programming changes. As this work was winding down, the fear of missing out on electronics systems requiring a “Y2K fix” led to investigations into whether those changes were necessary in almost every piece of equipment in existence.
My father, who was working in the lab at Canadian Blood Services at the time, remembers IT professionals spending countless hours checking all manner of equipment that did not even contain clocks or timers, such as refrigerators and freezers, “just in case.”
The fear that existed in certain corners of society did end up having an effect on some people who initially did not care much about the panic that was going on around them. After taking out extra money and preparing a safety kit, all of the warnings that began piling up in relation to travel became too much for Derkacz and her group. They ended up making “the decision not to attend the New Year’s event based on how so many people living in Toronto & area would travel home (and) the congestion (that) Y2K would cause.”
Casas, who initially thought the whole thing ridiculous, spent the day of New Year’s Eve at work listening to the stories from co-workers detailing how they were all preparing for Y2K. In the end, she began to panic with the thought that maybe there was something to it all and “on the way home, purchased the ONE remaining water bottle in a store.”
And, what of Ryan Wildgoose, who was so intent on staying up to usher in the New Year? Unfortunately, that wasn’t to be the case. The next day, while the Y2K fear mongers and skeptics proceeded with their post-mortems of what went right (or wrong, depending on your perspective at the time), the only thing that mattered to him “was that they failed to wake me and I missed it.”
In the end, after the many news articles and television programs forecasting doomsday scenarios or predicting absolutely nothing happening, Y2K came, the year 1999 turned to 2000 and as Petra Casas wrote, “We all survived and life went on.”
Jason Marcon is a writer and history enthusiast in Greater Sudbury. He runs the Coniston Historical Group and the Sudbury Then and Now Facebook page. Memory Lane is made possible by our Community Leaders Program.
