Ottawa tornado brought surprise insights

Power outage highlighted the value of community, says John M. Richardson.

Like many people in the Ottawa area, I was forced by Friday’s storm and power outage into a kind of urban dweller’s survival mode. My first priority was to get my wife and son home safely from work. They had biked downtown that morning but by afternoon the sky had turned black, overloaded drains erupted like geysers, and our neighbourhood’s old maple and cedar trees whipped around in the wind and rain as though composed of something far more flexible than wood.

Safely together again as the late afternoon gloom gusted into dusk, our family faced several minor, domestic challenges. I had just finished cooking a giant pot of chicken noodle soup. What was I going to do with that? Two bushels of Roma tomatoes were sitting on the kitchen counter, ready to be chopped up and made into sauce. Would the power return in time for us to cook them?

We had essays to write and research to complete. How could we gain access to power and Wi-fi?

Solutions and workarounds began to emerge. Friends with power a couple of blocks over stored bags of soup in their deep freeze, gave us their internet password and invited us to camp out on their deck whenever we needed to go online. My father-in-law’s nearby retirement residence had electricity, so plans took shape to come and go from there, plugging and unplugging.

The end of the outage was heralded by a cacophony of beeping noises in the house — the sound of appliances restarting and rebooting — and the cheering of children in backyards up and down the street.

We were relieved, but I couldn’t help feeling a sense of loss for what had disappeared with the return of power.

During the outage, I noticed how quiet the house had become. We live our domestic lives accompanied by a quiet but persistent soundtrack of almost imperceptible hums and buzzes from the fridge, the LED light bulbs, the PVR and other devices. Without it, I felt my body relax as if my nervous system had been given permission to take things down a notch.

Without lights, we were forced to switch on torches and ignite candles. I suddenly became very aware of the quality of light. The patchy glare of a cheap hardware store flashlight directing me down the stairs. The glow of candles casting flickering shadows over the kitchen walls. White light. Golden light. Shades of grey. I had forgotten that light could be

We were left alone with our thoughts and with each other. We talked. We saw the stars and moon sparkle ...We read books by flashlight ...

so varied and beautiful.

Without music and news, we were left alone with our thoughts and with each other. We talked. We saw the stars and moon sparkle in a windswept night sky. We read books by flashlight while lying in our beds like kids.

In the silence, I was reminded that a house is above all a shelter, the roof and walls a thin membrane protecting the people inside from the climate outside. Through its windows, I noticed the bonds of friendship between neighbours grow visible. Kettles of hot water were ferried across the street. Power cords snaked from houses with power to those without. Strangers cheerily exchanged the latest information on the street and families squeezed together in restaurants and coffee shops to make room for others.

Electricity facilitates our lives and I am as reliant upon it as anyone. And I know that the tornado caused terrible damage.

But Friday’s storm made me realize that laptops and stoves, tablets and fridges, cellphones and smart speakers can make us overlook some of what defines us as human.

I will try to remember the nourishing quality of silence, the fragility of life in the face of nature’s might and the value of community now that things have reset to normal for most of us.