Thirty Years Ago Today: Happy Anniversary, Rob & Leanne

It started on Friday night. I had planned on working late to reorganize some databases. I had just taken the databases offline and started the REORG utilities when a co-worker, Josie, called to tell me that I should head for home right away. Her words, "Go home now or you won't be going home at all." There was a blizzard descending on Winnipeg and it was going to be a good one. So I grabbed a portable terminal and headed for home.

The drive home took over an hour and I don't think I ever got the car higher than 2nd gear. But my little Honda CRX chewed up snow like a hot knife goes through butter and it got me home no problem. So I sat at home running my database utilities and I had everything back online by 1:00 a.m. Bedtime.

By the time I went to bed, the storm had grown immensely. I was supposed to be going to a wedding in Brandon on Saturday. I looked out the living room window and thought to myself, "This is going to have to clear off in a hurry if I'm going to make it Brandon." It didn't.

By Saturday morning, the storm was crazy. I knew that there were houses on the other side of the street, but there was no evidence of them as I looked out the window. I couldn't see them at all. Just a wall of white blowing horizontally down the street at about 70 MPH.

My good friend and co-worker, Rob, was getting married that afternoon in Brandon, about a two hour drive straight down the Trans-Canada from Winnipeg (on good roads). A lot of people from work were planning on going but it was seeming more and more unlikely that any of us would be attending.

I worked with a guy named Steve. Steve was a very cool guy. He had a great sense of humour and was fun to hang out with. He also had a brand new IROC Camaro and a reputation as something of a crazy man behind the wheel.

About 9:00 Saturday morning, my phone rang. It was Josie. She was supposed to be getting a ride to Brandon with Steve. She asked, "What's the weather like where you are?" I was pretty sure it was exactly the same as it was where she was. Steve had phoned her while she was in the shower and left a message saying that he was leaving now to pick her up and should be at her place in about 15 minutes. Josie had tried to call him back several times - no answer. "You don't think he's really crazy enough to try going, do you? He’s not answering his phone! Do you think he’s on his way over here? Do you think he’s going to expect me to go with him?"

Of course I didn't, but I couldn't tell her that. I knew exactly what Steve was up to and this was going to be fun. I mean, she was all tied up in knots because she thought that he might just be crazy enough to try it. All I could say to Josie was that no-one in their right mind would be driving today but, well, this was Steve we were talking about so all bets were off. We ended the conversation with me trying not to laugh when I told her to call me back when he got to her place. I got hold of him about 11:00 and told him about her call. He laaaaaaughed and laaaaaaughed and laaaaaaughed...

About 9:30 that morning, my power went out. This was at a time when the power grid in Charleswood was so fragile that, if 3 people tried to make toast at the same time, the entire grid died. So it wasn’t totally unexpected.

Then my girlfriend phoned. "What time are we leaving for Brandon?" FUNNY! I told her that Steve would be swinging by her place around 11:00 to pick her up and bring her to my place. Total silence at the other end of the phone (she knew Steve’s reputation, too). Maria lived in Elmwood, where they had actual electricity flowing through the wires. She told me that she had heard on the radio that there was no power in Charleswood and they were reporting that it would be out for 8 - 10 hours. Oh, peachy! We talked for a while longer and then she said she was going to go watch some TV. That’s just cruel!

It was the epitome of the word "boredom" where I was. I had no TV, no radio, no lights and a furnace that wouldn't turn on because there was no electricity to run the fan or trip the igniter. Great! There was nothing to do. But shortly after I got off the phone, I heard an engine running outside. Something was coming down the street (and, no, it wasn't Steve). It was my papergirl! Somehow, the Winnipeg Free Press had gotten the Saturday papers out to their delivery kids and my papergirl was delivering her route with her dad by snowmobile. Salvation! The Saturday paper was full of news stories and pages and pages of crosswords, cryptoquotes and all kinds of puzzles. I was saved from my boredom! My papergirl got a huge tip that Christmas!

It was very dark outside. Not much light was filtering through the storm but I had a nice fire going so I curled up in front of the fireplace with a pen and my crosswords and snuggled in for "a long winter's day." The power did eventually come back on (in less than 8 hours) but there really was nothing to do except watch the snow blow down the street at a nearly horizontal angle or, if I got bored with that, I could watch it piling up in my driveway. At about 11:00 that night, I went for a walk. I trudged up to the corner of the street. Everything was choked with three to four feet of snow and nothing was moving except for the snow blowing under the street lights. Then suddenly the stillness was shattered by a front-end loader emerging from the next street with its bucket lowered pushing a path through the snow. It was clearing a path for an ambulance which was running right behind it. I hope whoever was inside made it okay. It could very well have been a pregnant woman who had gone into labour. There is something about bad weather that makes pregnant women want to go into labour. I don’t understand it, but it’s true. My daughter was born a full month before her due date during the worst ice storm Winnipeg had seen in decades. She wasn’t due for another month but, Hey! It’s really ugly out there! C’mon, Mom and Dad, let’s go for a drive!

By Sunday, the storm was over. The day dawned beautiful and clear (cheerful, happy voice!). There was a cloudless, deep blue sky (cheerful, happy voice!). The air was cold, crisp and clean (cheerful, happy voice!)…… and the snow was four feet deep (depressed, grumpy voice). There was also the sight of my neighbour walking down the street carrying a long strip of rubber in his hand. The drive belt on his snow blower had snapped the minute he started it up but the Petro-Can about a mile away was open and they had the right belt. And so he was walking gingerly over the 4 foot deep snow, trying not to sink and get buried up to his hips, on his way to the Petro-Can to buy a new belt. The guy who owned the Petro-Can was a genius. He had figured out that everyone was going to need gas for their snowmobiles and snow blowers, so he had snowmobiled in to work and he had the only gas for sale for miles in any direction. People were pooling gas with their neighbours to fill up one snowmobile so that someone could use it to take everyone’s jerry cans to the gas station and get them all filled to keep the snow blowers running. Once word got out that he was open, they were even coming from the other side of the river to get gas.

On our street, it had a kind of block party feel to it. Everyone was outside chatting and there was a real party atmosphere. The people who owned snow blowers helped the people who didn’t and by the end of the afternoon everyone’s driveway was clear. They had been emptied of snow and they all stopped at the curb. Perfectly clear driveways ending in a 4-foot wall of snow at the unplowed street. It must have looked bizarre from the air. All of these strips of concrete leading to nowhere.

The streets were all cleared and the city was back to normal by Thursday, but getting to work on Monday was an adventure. Most people just stayed home but I had to go in. I didn’t have a choice. I was supposed to be flying to a conference the next day and my plane ticket was at the office. I would have skipped the conference but I was kind of obligated to go. I was the keynote speaker. The company had made a big deal out of one of its employees having this great honour and they would have been less than amused to hear me say, “Yeah, well, it snowed so I didn’t bother going.” Not good. So I had to slog about a mile through the snow to get to where the streets had been cleared for the buses to run and then make the same trek to get home a few hours later. But I did it. And the next morning I had to do the same slog on the same unplowed mile, suitcase dragging through the snow behind me, to meet a taxi at 6:00 a.m. to get me to the airport for my flight. The things you do, right?

The people on the radio today have been saying that it was the worst blizzard in Winnipeg's history, even worse than the big blizzard of Mar. 4, 1966. But the people on the radio are all in their 30s. What do they know? I lived through both of them and, trust me, Nov. 8 was bad but Mar. 4 was the worst by a country mile. But we all survived. We had lots of fun clearing everybody’s driveway and then sitting on the snowbanks when we were finished, drinking rye and coke (no ice required). Some people even brought out their barbeques and we all raided our freezers for whatever we could contribute to a nice big neighbourhood cook-out. What should have been a lousy weekend actually ended really well. And now, it’s 30 years later and we can all sit back, smile and wax nostalgic. Good times!

Oh, and one more thing….. Happy 30^th Anniversary, Rob and Leanne! Sorry I missed the wedding.