Was it really “the end of the world” as we knew it (as Dianna Quesnelle’s son asked her at the time) or did we feel fine with it all? Let’s take a look at some of the memories that you shared with us about those two fateful days in August and then we can judge for ourselves.
Due to the sheer vastness of the North and the large number of remote locations to (proverbially) get lost in, it’s no wonder that many readers never knew that anything had happened until after it was over.
Reader Rob Penstone felt that he got “ripped off on the whole experience”, as he “was at a buddy's camp for a week when this happened, we already didn't have power, came back and found out the whole world fell apart.”
Similarly, Mike Lemieux “was in the bush camping at Sinclair Lake and … didn't know there was a blackout.” Ann Brown was “backpacking in Algonquin and knew nothing.”
Other local readers, such as Doris Rossman, didn't realize what was going on as she was nowhere near the affected areas at the time (in her case, on an East Coast Bus Tour) and were “lucky to have missed it all.” Jim McEwen was “trucking through Missouri when the power went out in Ontario. Only thing it really affected for me was a lack of cell service to call home. Always power wherever I was.” However, he did add that he remembers that the situation “was hard on the family at home.”
Rob Pasivirta was nowhere near Sudbury (or even Ontario actually) but was “in New York at LaGuardia airport stranded with thousands of other people. No power, lights, gas or hotels available. Sat on the floor with my luggage and waited. Watched the chaos of angry travellers.”
And, why were those travellers angry? Reader Joe Donald Rollin had a ground floor seat to view exactly what happened with air travel at that time.
“We were in our pool (when) the pump quit running, so I went in the house to check the breaker only to find out that there was no power anywhere,” he said. That’s when he looked up and “saw a jet heading east only to see it turn around” at that moment he “realized it was a more serious problem.”
Ryan Michael Wildgoose’s childhood self must have thought he was living in the big city because his adult self remembers being “panicked that there would be looters and that they'd steal our DVD player, because ‘Labyrinth’ was in the DVD player and I couldn't get it out without power.” (Sorry Ryan, I don’t think looters’ first thought was to snag a copy of that ’80s David Bowie classic) Then again, like many others he also “remembers having a fire in the backyard and listening to the radio all night.”
Now, not to say that everything was all doom and gloom or ignorance to the situation at hand. Many of our readers wrote to tell us how they and their neighbours enjoyed themselves despite everything going on around them.
Rob Turenne remembers “massive neighborhood BBQ parties. Tons of food and tons of beer, it was actually a pretty fun couple of days.” Joanne Anthony agreed and added that they “barbecued everything from (their) freezer over those few days.” The spirit of “just grab a plate and walk down the street” (as Rob Turenne called it) reached through the darkness and wafted on the night air, like so much BBQ smoke.
Food and drink (especially with warming fridges and thawing freezers) were definitely the order of the day for most people. Catharine Belfry Mitton “had a three-day campfire and invited all our friends over to party and help us eat our thawing food.” Bev Barlow remembers “being very grateful that my super neighbour had all the equipment and know-how to brew coffee on his BBQ” although she regrets “missing out on the ice cream giveaway at the corner store.”
Suzanne Clarisse Tessier “was shopping at the time, went home, put a case of beer in the freezer, lit a whole bunch of candles and stayed up all night listening to my cassettes.” As she concluded, it was a matter of “making the best out of the situation.”
Unfortunately, situations like these also can bring out the darker side of some people, as experienced by a Northern Life reader, Maria Brooks, who 20 years ago wrote a letter to the editor on the topic.
“On the day of the blackout when I was visiting the Sudbury area I was disgusted by the selfishness of some businesses. I was searching for bags of ice to keep food and my newborn nephew's milk from spoiling,” she wrote. “I could not believe it when one store raised the price of ice to $5 per bag. The very next day I returned and noticed that the price was back to its regular $2.50 a bag. I told the clerk it was sad that they raised their prices on a day of crisis just to make an extra buck. This should have been a day when people in the community supported each other. I did hear about other Sudbury area businesses that donated food and water to those in need. To them I say, ‘thank you.’ Your goodwill will never be forgotten.”
Remember those intrepid Northern Breweries employees featured in a photo accompanying the previous article? Well, they would have served reader Dan Oechsler who “remember(s) going to the Northern outlet on Lorne Street because they were smart enough to stay open (for) cash only.” However, he does lament that it was a “rough day at work the next morning.”
Unfortunately, about 170 miners lived the No. 1 fear of most miners when they were marooned underground in four Falconbridge mines across the Sudbury area when the power went out. One of those men, Joe MacDonald, who was working at Craig Mine, wrote a letter to Northern Life before the month was through and relayed the experience of those workers who were stuck.
“I am an electrician at one of the Sudbury mines. And I was one of the men stuck underground Thursday night,” he wrote. “I say stuck, because trapped implies a sense of emergency that wasn't really there. We had a way up, if you count climbing 4,000 feet of ladders. But we did have water available.
There is no food stored underground for emergencies such as this. There is no emergency generator ready to supply power underground. When the power goes out on surface, there is no power underground, period.
“The fans that provide ventilation for underground are powered from surface. The pumps that control the water levels underground are fed from power from the surface. There is no spare oxygen underground. The ‘lunchrooms’ are little more than holes in the wall (think cave) with a door on the end that can be sealed in the event of an emergency like a fire.
“Inside can be found a two-way radio, an oven, a microwave and a telephone. The air supplied to the refuge stations is from a compressor, which again gets power from the surface. The lights are also powered from the surface, (so) the only light you get is from your miner's lamp.”
Speaking of a severe lack of light and how eerie that can make any situation (even above ground), Nico Taus was on a Greyhound bus coming back from Montreal when everything happened. Upon his arrival at “the bus station on Notre Dame there was no power. I got home and had the house to myself for a few days. It was super quiet and a little creepy.”
Reader Harvey Wyers gave us a claustrophobic’s (and my own) worst nightmare by writing that he “was literally one step from going into an elevator.” (Gives me the shivers just typing that).
A few readers wrote in to tell of their health-related experiences that day while also reminding us how reliant we are on electricity that some functions (including life-saving ones) would not be possible without it.
Sudbury Then and Now follower, Terry Dupuis “was on dialysis when it happened” and heralds the staff and their planning. “Thank goodness for backup generators, (the) nurses at the Laurentian Hospital were champs.”
Reader Paulette Lajeunesse concurred with this assessment as she was doing her mother's dialysis at home and had to head for the backup generators at the hospital to ensure that she received her care.
Petra Casas was due to have her first child, but still working at the Land Registry Office when the power went out.
“It didn’t take long to realize that all the power was out, as in addition to the lights going out, everyone also lost their cellphone signals and all the traffic lights were out,” she wrote. ”A friend did not want me to walk back to my office because there were no traffic lights as he was concerned for my safety. He drove me back, but the seat was very reclined and … it gave me indigestion, which I had never had before.
“I remember thinking I was perhaps going into labour and that I would have to give birth in total darkness. I was slightly panicked at the prospect of this happening. Thankfully, that did not happen.”
In Petra’s case, blackout-related health scares and food adventures collided (very much in her favour). The next day “when I returned to the office, my co-worker, who was friends with the owners of DQ, brought in a bunch of ice cream cakes as the cakes were beginning to melt. I spent the rest of the day at the office eating ice cream cake, as no one was going to try to take that away from a woman who was 38 weeks pregnant.”
Like many others, Fred Sigurdson was working that day however unlike the others, for a split-second he thought he caused everything. As he tells the story, he was “with a friend and turned on an air compressor at the exact time the power went out and noticed (that) all the power was out in the housing complex we were working at and thought it was our fault and started panicking not realizing it was out everywhere.”
Michelle Newbury was living in Sault Ste. Marie at the time and her husband “was working at Burger King, and he still had to go to work even though they couldn't serve customers. So, they played cards all night.”
Eric Legendre was working at the CIBC as a summer student in the New Sudbury Centre and recalled the bank tellers being required to return to early 20th century means of banking. As he tells it, “We actually stayed open during the outage. We processed withdrawals manually for clients of our branch. (We) actually looked up customer account info from daily account logs to verify they had enough funds in their account. We had to manually post all the transactions once the power was restored.”
Just the thought of all of that work would make anyone agree with him when he states, “What a nightmare that was!”
As things slowly (but surely) began to return to normal, pre-blackout habits came back with a vengeance (and in this case, being Canadians, how could we not want to indulge on what we missed?).
As Harvey Wyers remembers, the power came up first in Hanmer and “I remember the line up way out the door as people lined up for their Timmies. Cars were lined up down the highway in both directions. Yup, the word got out to the rest of Sudbury the Hanmer Timmies was open.”
Well dear readers, it’s almost time to flick the switch and turn out the lights on another edition of Memory Lane. Before we go, I’ll leave you with a shared thought from a couple of our readers. Michael Riutta wrote, “We need to have another one. Many neighbours met other neighbours and we found out how resilient we were without electricity.” And, H.A. Ryosa believes the blackout forced “people to look at the world differently, take a step away from technology for a bit and come together with community, or even experience one’s own consciousness in new ways.”
Definitely something to ponder, don’t you think?
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.
