Thanks for reacting to my video! It took quite awhile to put this together, I used dozens of news sources from so many places all with different audio, background music which was quite difficult. Ironically, most of us who lived through this storm never saw any of this footage live because we had no power and no TV haha I hope you enjoy part two!
Exactly! I lived in Montréal then, but I was attending university in Sherbrooke, and I drove through this storm on Jan 6 and again on Jan 7. I knew it was bad…but not that bad till my mom called me on Jan 8 or 9 from Chicoutimi, explaining how bad it was as she was privy to it on TV!
@@SheaMF Welcome! 😊 I'm B.C. born, lived most of my life out here. A bit of time Northern Manitoba and Ontario. Northern B.C. is cold, same for most of B.C. I live in lower mainland, hardly any winter. Enjoy.
@@coolwater55 Oh when I say I moved to BC, I spent over 20 years in the tri-cities, and now Abbotsford for almost 4 years. I hear ya! But my first winter here (Dec 98-March 99), and one of my part-time jobs was to work in some schools in New West…showing up and being told there’s no school cause there’s a tiny blanket of snow…mind blowing to me!
I'm a retired lineman on Canada's west coast. A large contingent of BC lineman headed backeast and crews from all over US & Canada joined with Quebec hydro to get power restored
I remember that a good chunk of the grid was completely destroyed. Some people had no heat and no power for weeks. People had no money, because there were no banks and no ATMs for dozens or hundreds of miles. You also couldn't use your credit card, because nothing worked. Also, there were a bunch of sleazy merchants who started profiteering off of basic necessities. It was so bad that people with snowmobiles would make runs to give food or, at least, sell it at a normal price. Farmers also gave people firewood, no questions asked (because most houses didn't have fireplaces, so it was unlikely that people followed "regulations"). 23:59 Sidenote: the PM of Quebec was limping because he had lost his leg to flesh-eating bacteria, not long before that... The flesh-eating bacteria being the crisis the province had just gotten out of before the Ice Storm hit... Yeah, that PM was not having a good time.
I remember it so well. No one from Quebec can forget it. I lived on the south shore of Montreal, in an area that the news called "the black triangle". We had no electricity for 3 weeks. Stores were all closed. At some point, the provincial police evacuated us from our home and we had to go in emergency shelters they made in schools. Some area had no electricity for even longer. Those fallen pylones where near my house. At times, we had to be carefull when going outside because of all the power lines on the streets and the falling trees. But at the same time, it was very beautiful. Everything was shining in the sunlight. And everyone helped each other. Fun fact: no burglaries where commited during the period even if most houses were empty and no security system was working. We were too busy for mischief XD
We lost all our mature maples to the ice storm, they couldn’t hold the weight of the ice on them, made me cry. When we got the the 98 ice storm hydro poles fell, you could see hundreds of them laying on the roads. My brother and his workers loaded up the tractors and trucks, chainsaws, food, water blankets everything they could get to help Quebec and drove down to help clean up. In Ontario we had no hydro for five days, thank god most of us have woodstoves or fireplaces to heat and cook on. Remember when you hear the costs, how long ago it was, that was a tremendous amount of money. Maple growers ended up losing businesses. I’m 67 and remember it clear as day. No phone’s working, most roads impassable, you were stuck where you were. We had skidoo’s and drove to schools to get kids home because buses couldn’t run. What a memory!
As devastating as that storm was, it was the most beautiful thing I ever saw. When the sun finally came out, the city was completely encased in ice, and glistened like a giant jewel. It was breathtaking.
I remember feeling like this too. Terrified but awe struck at the beauty. The noise that the ice made on the trees sounded like the clinking of crystals. I was in an apartment on East Sherbrooke and the freezing rain hot between the bricks and the mortar of my building. The expansion of the ice caused the brick wall to collapse. Very scary!
@@pennyauld Wow! That's crazy! I was living where the Plateau meets Outremont, near Park Ave. Miraculously, it was a small pocket that didn't lose power!
@@charliesgirl3447 So true for the most part, but I also have some horror stories from my area of a**holes who behaved selfishly and went as far as to hinder efforts by other members of the communities to help each other as well as stores and hotels that decided to engage in price gouging desperate people in their communities.
So far, this documentary is focused on Montreal. The storm started between Napanee and Kingston in Ontario, and it reached all the way to Nova Scotia. For many years as you drove down the 401 you could see exactly where it started. The broken trees did take years to recover. In Kingston, my home was without power for nine days. I was one of the lucky ones. Some in rural areas were without power for two months. Looking at the news reports of more ice coming, in this video, was funny. For those of us in the midst of the storm, we had no idea, we couldn't turn on the news, it just seemed like it would never end. When it did end, the area was hit with a deep freeze with minus 30C temps for two or three weeks. That made it so dreadfully difficult for workers trying to repair electrical lines. Those of us who lived through that storm will never forget it. We get freezing rain most years, but nothing like that. Every time there is a hint of freezing rain in the forecast, it is still anxiety provoking. We just pray we never have to experience anything like that again.
Yessss. I still get nervous when there's freezing rain (we have some happening now for the third time this winter). I forgot about the deep freeze after the ice was over, it was like nature adding insult to injury.
I lived close to Sherbrooke and we were hit by the ice storm very hard also. My parents in Quebec city had snow, my grandmother died during the ice storm. On the drive from Sherbrooke to Quebec you could see where the ice storm changed to a snow storm.
My grandfathers farm is inside Kingston. Luckily he had multiple fire places in his house and a large supply of wood that he burned through faster than ever without his furnace working. I lived outside Toronto at the time and did not really know what went on. Remember our first visit after power was restored the forest around his property wasn't the same and our climbing tree lost its limbs. This is the storm that made him decide to sell all his cattle and other animals. He was walking up the hill to check on his animals every day and could not do anything to really help them through it. He was already thinking about retiring his farm but this pushed him to do it sooner. I remember seeing his cattle from the 401 as we drove to visit and one time there were no cattle. The first thing I said was his cattle were missing and asked if the escaped.
I lived in Easter Ontario and went without electricity for 2 and a half weeks with neighbors sharing what generators were around in order to get sump pumps working and get some heat in the houses before everything froze
My dad was responsible of the service department in a generator company near Montreal during the ice storm. The Canadian army was stationed in the parking lot and they were deciding where he could send technicians to. He was working around the clock to help farmers and small businesses by phone, unable to send technicians. It was a very challenging time.
Tell your dad Thank You - it would have been so much worst for the rest of us if it wasn't for all the dedicated people who worked tirelessly to get electricity back to people. All heroes in my book.
My dad was an electrician (retired now) and was installing generators so that businesses could stay opened during this ice storm in the Outaouais region (Gatineau -Ottawa)
It was also happening in Ottawa. The breaking trees sounded like gun shots and it was nerve wracking. Trying to sleep was not easy due to the breaking trees. There were live power lines down on the roads in my downtown neighbourhood. You had to be careful not to slide into them. My block had power. We were very fortunate! They opened shelters for ppl without heat. Scary stuff.
It was. I was driving down the road to work and a power line fell beside me. Our house loss power but luckly my aunt and nanny did not so we had a place to stay.
We were driving back to Toronto from winter vacation in Florida. We heard about the storm on the radio as we were driving north, but once we passed Ohio it became serious. I lived just north of Toronto in a small city called Barrie. A regular 45 minute drive took us nearly 3.5 hours. The snow was literally waist-high.
I grew up in rural Eastern Ontario, 2 hours outside of Ottawa. We had freezing rain for the better part of 3 days straight. This ice storm left people at home without power for 17+ days. No heat, no ability to feed themselves, no water. I will forever have the sound of ice caked tree branches giving way and falling on us as a core memory . Seeing pictures of power line towers crumpled under the weight of the ice they were covered in will stay with me for the rest of my life.
I was watching this video with tears in my eyes. I lived this, I’m from Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, in the Dark Triangle. We evacuated our home, lost so many (my grand-father died at that time). So hard to see this again, but I’m grateful I survived this dark time. We can still see the damaged, even today. My house is in a forest. With maple trees.
I was living (still am) in cowansville at the time and my daughter was 2.5 years old. We ended up in Massey Vanier High School for 2 weeks. It was terrible!
I was pregnant/give birth with my 2nd & lived through this disaster. An hour south of Montreal. 10 days of blackness, shelters & a lot crying. Couldn't even go home with our new baby, cause of damage pipes that iced our kitchen and basement. Still get scared every freakin' January while having the best birthday party for my boy
@@_Julie_Bee On dirais qu'on a un mois de janvier qui veux fêter ses 25 ans de verglas... ils en annoncent encore pour moi (Estrie) ce soir et demain...
I'm from rural Ontario. We heard birch and pine trees literally explode. It sounded like a shot gun going off. You can still see the aftermath when travelling down the country roads.
@@jules3048 I was much younger as well, so my recollection is fuzzy. I do recall some poor French guy on the evening news, looking a lot like the cartoon character Yvon of the Yukon and literally burning his money in his fireplace to try to keep his house a little warmer. He was wearing multiple blankets and his breath hung in the air. Not until Game of Thrones did I see another camera capture a dark icy hell so vividly. I can't remember how many people died...
Hey Tyler I was a soldier deployed to the ice storm. We hijacked a locomotive and brought it into the town to power the local shelter and a few other building and used it as a large generator. We had to do patrols at night using night vision googles to check homes for burglers ect because people were evaluated.What you don't hear about is how this effected some people like farmers that lost all the animals we also called in American hydro crews to assist as we couldn't handle something of this magnitude on our own.
Is that the one you took off the tracks and drove down the frozen road in Lachine? Canada, when things get tough, don't underestimate the brains and the testicals of Canadians!!!! LOL
You need to view about the Snowmageddon storm in 2020 on the East Coast, the amount of snow we received was unreal. We got 17 feet of snow in one snow.
One thing we learned personally was we got a generator run by gas. I always have a month worth of meals in the freezer, fill the tub and jugs with water, bought hurricane lanterns, always stay well stocked up. Be prepared the next time!
I lived it, in Montreal, and with some friend when decided to go down to where the worst happen, and help the struggling folks that had worst with my winter survival skills and friends, we sit down one night talk and all decided to do something and we did.
@@jq8974 That ok, we almost didn't because the call service were adamant that we didn't. But it nothing compared to some other. everybody kind of help each other in some way or a other. maybe it was not obvious to everybody, but we did. like i remember my father and mother and in my neighbourhoods were everybody would go door by door just checking on people if the were okay or not. We all had very or barely no living condition. if you remember we all help before the snow fall the last day shovel everybody roof but even that didn't help much some sheltter even had there roof fall because of not be in time to do all that. There was even some road off like the 40 simply because it was deadly to drive on it. so even hydro and the authority had issue servicing help
I lived in the Black Triangle during that storm, the worst hit area on the south shore of Montreal. We were 1 month without power. We could not get cash from the bank, no food, no gaz. It has marked me for the rest of my life. From then on, every time they announce freezing rain, I get scared.
I lived in Trois-Riviere back then and it was scared of falling branches on the ground. It was like shattering glass. I had power, but it was flickering a lot.
I had a contract in Rougemont at the time. That whole area was bleak, but also mesmerizing. The devastation amongst the trees was enormous and remained visible for a very long time. Rang du Cordon was covered in a thick crust of ice which remained for a long time. One day, while heading to work, I stopped to take pictures of a American crew installing new hydro poles, they all stopped temporarily and struck a pose with their big orange truck. Even in the worst times you have to try to maintain a certain levity...
The most eerie part of it all, to me , was EVERY THING was so gray. It was like being on a different planet. Nothing looked familiar. What a strange scary feeling. I will never forget that ice storm as long as I live.
same but i was lucky, we were lucky enough to live in the open with very little trees around, and could afford a generator to power our house for short durations. Plus we had a snowmobile and no school and i was like 6 or 7 so i was happy without knowing how bad it actually was.
24:05 oh friend :( he didn't told people to stay home , he told them to go out and seek refuge . A LOT of older folks were found frozen in their home sadly. I was 14 when it happened and it still feel unreal , my parents were renting a big apartment with a wood stove at that time , we took in a lot of people for nearly 2 months
It lasted for 21 days before we could go back home. My daughter was one month old. We left our house. The electrical posts were all fallen in the roads. I ended up in a hospital while my husband had 5 kids to take care of with my mother. The ice was 1" to 2" thick everywhere.
I've lived in Nova Scotia my whole life. I was a kid when this ice storm hit Quebec... and there were a lot of people/adults that were worried that once this storm got unlocked from being over that area that it may come our way. We did get a little bit of ice, but nothing compared to Montreal and southern Quebec. Quebec helped us out a few years ago actually when we had the worst ice storm Halifax has ever experienced. There were about 3 inches of ice on every road, side walk, trees, buildings, etc. We did not have the equipment to get the ice off the roads. Montreal let our city borrow their ice removal vehicles to clear our roads... I think they started keeping vehicles like that after this ice storm in 1998. Our ice storm just a few years ago happened in February, and it was a slow buildup over multiple weeks. We had 3 or 4 separate ice storms over the course of about 2 weeks. Halifax shut down, transit buses were taken off the roads, many businesses were closed down. Lots of places without power. What Quebec learned from that ice storm of 1998, helped us get through ours!
We received a lot of help during this period, so it's only fair we helped other provinces. Many lessons were learned. HydroQuebec namely discovered the hard way what the weaknesses of its network were. Old electric towers were redesigned in the "black triangle" to better handle this type of situation.
I remember this storm. I was visiting a friend in Montreal for 2 weeks when it happened. I was only there for the first 2 days of that disaster but OMG, it was a mess. My dad had business in Montreal so the plan was he would pic me up & we would drive back home to N.B. We saw the damage. Everything was covered in at least 1 to 2 inches of ice. When the sun finally came out & it reflected on the ice, it was a weird combination of beautiful, but terrifying. I've lived in N.B. my whole life so I remember the Nova Scotia Ice storms. N.B. didn't get hit as bad, but it was still a mess. We got a generator after that storm.
Interesting that I am an hour away in Truro and do not remember that ice storm a few years ago. It was likely snow here. We get freezing rain off and on here every winter now. But nothing like the massive ice storm that hit Ontario and Quebec, thankfully. We can have our own weather disasters with hurricanes coming up the Atlantic! Halifax really can have such different weather from us here in the more inland areas an hour away...milder winters, cooler summers.
I lived in the ICE storm of 98 , - lived through the 100 year flood of Calgary , Alberta in 2013 -and the Fort McMurray Fire 🔥 of 2016. The most interesting thing was in Montreal the city pushed a train engine along a city street to a hospital and used it as a generator to power the hospital .
I worked downtown Calgary that weekend it flooded... It was wild, but also weirdly peaceful after the cops finished evacuating EVERYONE... Being able to stand in the middle of 4th ave, not a vehicle in sight in any direction, not a pedestrian, nothing... It was WILD...
As someone who lived through this as a telecommunications technician, thank you for bringing this to the masses of those who never knew about this. Yourself included. Thank you Tyler
I was an insurance storm adjuster who worked on this storm. One interesting experience was inspecting the inside of a home that had been without power for weeks. The warm air in a home had condensed (humidity/moisture-wise) into the carpets when the heat was lost which made them rigid - and the carpets could snap when walked upon. It was truly bizarre.
Thank you for reacting Tyler. I am from Eastern Ontario and experienced this storm. Not as bad as Quebec.. but bad enough to have lost power for a few days.... so no heat during that time either. In my house with five layers on trying to stay warm. Also no toilet as the water in it froze. No water in my house as the pipes froze too. No cooking to make warm food for your belly or a tea/coffee to warm you up. It was awful. The second wave of the storm took siding off my house and shingles off my roof. I just kept remembering the awful news updates and how badly some areas like Montreal were suffering. It was so scary.. but compared to them.. we were the lucky ones. 🥺☹ Oh and you are right.. we walked out the door and it was like a movie. It felt so surreal. I mean we get ice storms at least once a year in my town.. but it had never been like that.. and still to this day.... ice storms seem like nothing.. compared to what happened to us in 98. To be honest we are very lucky there were not more deaths than stated. Mother nature is not to be underestimated!!! 🥶😱❄☄⛈
I’m in eastern Ontario too, east of Ottawa, I didn’t lose power at all during this storm. My neighbours across the road from me lost power for five days, I had four families, with their children and animals stay with us…My friend who is about half an hour east of me lost power for 59 days, she was in the swath where all the power lines were downed for miles and miles…We brought them our generator and gas, they didn’t want to leave their home unattended due to break-ins in the area. I made the drive out with gas every other day…
I was 16 at the time. I remember we were supposed to go back to school on my 17th birthday, but the school had transformed into a shelter for people without power and who had no source of heat or generator. We were fortunate enough that my parents house was on the same electrical line than the hospital. So the longest we were without power was about 3-4 hours. For weeks we didn’t go back to school, and I remember my parents house being filled with uncles, ants and cousins, and how it was like a super long holiday break for us kids. Now I get super emotional watching this with my adult eyes. I understand a lot more why we saw our parents being so worried.
Welp, this is eerie. Staring out my front window watching the ice mist coat the tree in my front yard, listening to the voice of CBCs Lloyd Robertson describing the ice disaster I lived through. You do a great job, Tyler.
This is a time I will never forget. I was without power for 14 days and had to use 5-gallon pails to keep my basement from flooding because it was where my only heat source was located. My family and I had to take shifts bailing out the sump pump, because all the ice on the ground was overwhelming our weeping tile. On top of all that we had a pet iguana we had to keep warm so a lot of my off time was spent with the iguana in my shirt so my body could keep him warm enough. I was never so sore or tired in my life and I really feared for my family safety. At the end of 14 days, roads where still full of ice and we couldn't move our car to go get food... we had to ration our food for the last 2 or 3 days before we got power and were able to make arrangements to get more food in the house. I also had to get a second sump pump because the one we had would run non-stop until the ice reseeded.
Hey Tyler! I am a Montrealer, born and raised, so I got to experience it first hand! I was 10 years old when this happened. I remember at first being happy school was closed. I remember how beautiful I thought the icy trees were, I remember the sound the tingling of the branches made, but also how silent it was outside. I remember my dad, who was working for the city, doing double shifts and even more, he'd come back to sleep a few hours and then go back to cleanup the branches and trees fallen everywhere, for weeks, we didn't see him much if at all. I remember we were not allowed to go outside, and that if we needed to get food, batteries, or bottled water (I think at some point we didn't have running water but I might remember wrong), everything was rationed and not easy to find. I don't think we lost power for too long, I remember one particular night we slept with our coats on but that's it... We were very lucky we didn't loose electricity like those on the south shore. I don't think my child mind realized how devastating that storm was for so many people. But I know it marked a whole generation, and whenever they announce icy rain nowadays, we're all worried. My dad took incredible pictures while doing his job, we got to see how destructive yet beautiful looking trees covered in ice could be! Everyone who lived through it, will never forget. For me personally, it helped me cope during the pandemic lockdowns. Like at least, we were safe. But yeah. What a life changing event this was! Thank you for watching this, reacting to it and sharing with us! Can't believe it's already been 25 years!
Montreal is a highly-treed city and is known for this. Many trees that were hundreds of years old. It was truly a tragedy to see so many trees destroyed.
I lived in Montreal during this. A huge tree fell on our house, damaging the garage roof. We were able to stay inside with our wood burning fireplace, and slept near it with sleeping bags. We were without power for almost 3 weeks. The eerie darkness and non stop sounds of popping and crashing outside I'll never forget.
Fun fact - I had just moved from Ottawa to Southern Ontario (specifically Port Dover) a few months prior to this storm. One day we returned from shopping to find 20 messages on our answering machine. All of them were from my in-laws checking to see if we were ok, if we had power, etc. etc… We had no idea Ottawa was experiencing a severe Ice storm. Where we were it was so warm we were wearing shorts - in January!!! The news was reporting that it had been so warm that tulips were starting to come up in the gardens!! Port Dover is only an 8 hour drive from Ottawa. Oh yeah- Us Canadians measure distance in time. It’s not x kilometres away, it’s 30 minutes away. lol
@@JamesMichaelDoyle i s'pose that depends on where in Ottawa you were. at Somerset & Preston, we were encased in ice but the snow deposit was standard issue & we still had power (even though the weight of ice on the standpipe was peeling it away from the building) until a routine Ottawa Hydro check pronounced it unsafe & cut it. we ended staying with a friend a coupla blocks away but we had a fieplace so we could still go home & cook on the fire for the few days we were powerless.
What Tyler doesn't realize it that ice storms are caused by warm weather, not cold. So I'm not surprised by your experience. I honestly don't remember my own experience of that winter. I remember the ice storm on the news, of course. And I was in Toronto in Jan 99 for the snowmageddon!☺
@@Kuado That sounds familiar. My boss just decided to go to his cabin in the midst of it, and refused to let us go home, where we struggled to deal with power outages, which could lead to basement flooding. What a jerk! I was so happy when he got fired a year later.
I remember this. Listening to CBC radio with follow ups on the terrible conditions. But it's true that it looks like Narnia or even more beautiful with the ice covering the tree branches. The bad thing is once it starts to melt ,ya better stay away from slanted roof top or under trees. That beauty can do some serious damage.
Walking home from Downtown Montreal in the dark (no street lights, not even traffic lights) was quite eerie. What hit me the most was that everyone was doing everything in an orderly manner, stoically, silently. I think I heard a car's horn only ONCE during the 2h walk (wasn't *that* far, but walking in 3" of pebbly/slushy/icy snow isn't easy, and many sidewalk were full of tree branches one had to go around)
Gotta say i'm pretty happy you reacted to this! I lived in on the south shore of montreal. I was 8 years old. We didnt have power for 2 weeks and luckily we had a cast iron stove in the basement so we stayed warm and boiled water there to cook and fill the bathtub with hot water. the first day of black out me and my family would sit on the couch looking outside the window and watch the electricity transformer explode one by one in the horizon until the one in our backyard exploded. was pretty insane seeing those bright greenish light pop up in the horizon as a kid.
I remember this well. Luckily those of us in southern Ontario were not affected. But it was heartbreaking to see what fellow Canadians were going through. I remember that utility crews from all over Canada and even U.S. crews went into the disaster areas doing what they could to restore power for people. It was horrendous.
We didn't even have support for the first bit because the area was too remote to access... 2 weeks no power not knowing when it was coming back.. was a crazy time. Luckily rural canadians are great at supporting one another!!
Southeastern Ontario was definitely affected! My aunt (in her 70’s) was living in Avery small rural community just 15 minutes northwest of Kingston. She had 1/2 inch of ice over everything. No power, phone, running water, heat for 5 days and she and my disabled uncle were trapped in their home. No army to help like in the cities east of her. It was fortunate that she had all sorts of camping equipment as she’d go deer hunting every fall. She set up in the attached garage, cooked out there, had lanterns for light and they slept on cots in a tent in her garage as she could heat it a bit without C O2 building up. Didn’t see a soul or hear from any resources like police or fire, or anyone for the entire 5 days. Not like Montreal. Luckily I was in Toronto where it was just a rain event. I was able to let the Kingston police aware of her situation, but it was still a long time for them to seek her out. I’d say she was affected!
I was working as 911 operator in Montréal during that ice storm. We were getting so many distress calls and within the first few hours (the calls started coming in around10pm and around 4am the first night) there where no more emergency vehicules or crews available to send. Every police car, every ambulance ,every fire truck, every Hydro-Québec truck, every City vehicules were out helping, and still more and more calls were coming in. It took days before we could send help to some people. And it took a few days before the army came in to help. For the rest of the week we were sleeping, eating, showering at work so we could work for as many hours as possible and still it wasn't enough to help everyone. This video sure brings back a lot of vivid memories.
2 года назад+12
The sound of the tree cracking and collapsing bring back so many memories of that times. I was hearing that sound continuously during the nights for multiple days. Lots of ppl lost their homes because of generators running 24/7 and fireplaces that were never cleaned.
One of the things about the ice storm is you didn't really appreciate the loss of trees until the next summer when so much of the canopy was gone. Streets that used to almost be a tunnel under the tree canopy were suddenly open to the skies.
It was the same in Toronto after the 2013 ice storm, all of the canopy was gone and all the streets that used to be tunnels of trees felt so weird and open that summer
The great ice storm of 1998 is one of those historical events where you remember where you were and what you were doing, like 9/11 or the Kennedy assassination. Personally, I had it easy. Me and the wife had just weeks earlier moved into our new home. We lost power for maybe three hours. She was four months pregnant. We had a gas fireplace and we snuggled in front of it. My sister on the other hand, after nearly a week without power, moved with her husband to our parents house and stayed there for two weeks. We all lived in the Ottawa area and we all had different experiences.
I lived in northern Ontario at the time. My parents coincidentally booked a trip to Florida at this exact time so we missed it all 😂😂. Talk about good timing 3:51 BTW we take out our states at this point and just skate down the road, done it many times
I remember watching this on the news, safe on the west coast of Canada. Describe tears to my eyes again, I seen a smaller version of an ice storm in New Brunswick when we passed through on our way to Nova Scotia many years back, it looks beautiful, but can turn deadly. Thank you for the video. I will be watching the next one.
I didn't knew this documentary existed, it's kind of amazing because I'm used to a lot of Quebec's history being told in French (as this affected in large part Quebec). The 1998 ice storm, for those that lived through it, is a bit like a 9/11 type of event where we all remember where we were and how it went down. I was a teenager back then, I had just gone back to high school after the holiday break on that first day of the ice storm, and back then school closures due to weather were not quite as common (let alone preventive as today) so the day had been the usual other than the weather. But by the evening, it wasn't very pretty out there and my dad who worked at a restaurant, from around 5 until closure near midnight, had been told to stay home. We lost power that first night around 7 or 8 pm and from there it was just dark and cold for the rest of the week. We all huddled into one of the bedrooms and lit candles, my dad invented some sort of heating device on the go with an aluminum plate and a coat hanger, basically using it to radiate the heat the candle gave away. It wasn't much but the bedroom was slightly warmer than the rest of the house and that's how we managed to get through. Not much food options since all we had to warm anything up was a propane stove for camping that we'd use in the kitchen with a window open to not get intoxicated by the co2. And you have to remember that back then social media didn't exist, cellphones weren't really a thing, for most people the radio was the only source of information. It wasn't until power started coming back and we could watch tv again that we started to realize the size of the devastation!
I was in Air cadets back 1998 (my last year i was 18). we were doing cadet training program in Drummonville,Qc when this happened we were given 2 choices, head home or help out. we stayed for 7 days chipping hard thick ice off pls doors get them out. I will never forget this.
Cool to see an American learn about this for the first time. I was 5 when the ice storm hit. I have vague memories of my parents anxiously discussing extended family and one extremely vivid memory of sitting on a mattress on the floor with my siblings in the dark playing with Fuzzy Felts (anyone else remember those toys?). Even now the ice storm is referred to in my area in casual conversation all the time. E.g. 'Yeah, we lost power, pretty bad storm, but not like the ice storm.' Watching your videos has really brought to my attention how many references are regional - nobody around here would blink if I mentioned 'the ice storm' but you've never even heard of it. Odd the things we take for granted!
Personal story here. My grandparents were snowbirds and had come home for Christmas and New Year’s. They were on one of the last flights out of the city before they cancelled all flights. When we lost power at home in Rosemont, we basically moved into their house for a week or so as there was food in the house and they were in close proximity to two hospitals and were on a priority hydro circuit. They never lost power once. Dad managed to grab one of the few generators from his place of work and was able to get the (natural gas) furnace started at home. So he was running back and forth between houses two or three times a day, to make sure the heat was on, pipes were not frozen, the generator had gas and was still there (as people were very desperate and generator theft was a problem).. I remember looking out the window one night and watching the sky flashing and flickering blue, almost like long sustained lightning. I now know today it was transformers on the hydro poles blowing up and wires arcing, but man it was so cool to watch. I was only starting grade school then, but will never forget the wild ride that was ice storm ‘98.
I still remember that storm. I lived in the country side and it was spooky AF going out at night time and just listening to all the trees cracking and snapping all around you.
Hey Tyler, as you will see in the second part, I lived in Dark Triangle. The week after the Montreal Storm was over and back with power (mostly) whereas we still had no power, no heat ... and no jobs to go back to. The government gave us some money to help out and asked creditors that had money owing to be patient due to the circumstances. We were in the dark for another 5 weeks after the initial storm... I have so many stories to tell. More in the next part...
i was twelve and i recently just watched the worst storm in Canadas history recently and it brought back a lot of memories. i remember how insignificant i felt watching those giant hydro power lines come crumbling down like they we're made of straw it was fun but it was also intimidating, i lived in eastern Ontario and we didnt get it nearly as bad
I remember thinking this was so bad , and spending weeks watching the weather channel, hoping that there did not develop a polar vortex and drop to 20 or 30 below
I was 8 years old and this storm is one of my favourite memories from childhood. We lived rurally and ended up cut off but because we used wood stoves and had lots of wood, our home was warm and cozy. I thought needing candles for light was super fun and we all spent a lot of time in front of the woodstove doing puzzles together. I loved the unusual days and spending all the time with my parents and big brothers and sister. The ice layers outside were fun as a kid. I’m sure it must have been so much more stressful for my parents, the adults in charge and actually responsible for things… but as a kid in our home, it made amazing memories.
I was 14, my brother was 10, and I have fond memories of this storm. No school for two weeks, playing outside, playing games with the candlelight. We spent this time at my grand parents, because they had a fireplace. I didn't understand at that time how dire the situation was.
We had to leave Montreal. Our apartment didn't get electricity back until 3 weeks later. And there was zero electricity. Gas stations, hospitals, everything was dark. I volunteered in providing community meals, and everyone came, regardless of income, age, etc. we lost hundreds of thousands of trees.
I remember packing relief boxes for this as a kid. I drew pictures on the boxes... which were labelled in English, so those who didn't speak English could understand what was in the box. I was 8. A few years ago, it was Ontario's turn to get one. Not nearly as severe as the '98 storm, but we had trees literally falling apart over our heads. A walk outside was a walk in peril.
Yes, I remember our ice storm -which was a mini version of what Montreal/southern Quebec went through. Ours was scary enough but what our neighbours went through - I don’t know how they survived it. I pray the infrastructure has been rebuilt to handle ice storms better in the future.
It's interesting your comment about at least they could light a candle. One thing that started to happen was people were being asphyxiated from the chemicals that were in some cheaper candles. At the time I worked for a large Candle Company that used natural products and we ended up shipping over a million candles to try and help people. I couldn't believe it but it turns out some people made candles using lead in their wicks!
Just found your channel. I really admire your sincere interest in Canadians and Canadian events. Much like this ice storm from my early thirties, to the other events and aspects of Canadian life, this reminds me of how a proud and resilient Canadian I am. I look forward to watching all of your videos and being reminded what a great and unique country this is. Thanks, dude.
You never worry about food going bad in the winter at least. My province got hit with a really bad snowstorm as well a few years ago. It snowed really hard for about four days straight. I think about half of it was out of power. Took about a week to get power back. I remember some of the rural areas didn't have power for close to a month.
I lived through it, we were in the suburbs of Montreal. I was 13 years old. Absolute hell freezing over type stuff..no heat no water no power and extreme cold for weeks because the whole power grid was destroyed. I was in highschool and they evacuated everyone at 1pm and took everyone home. I'll always remember that day.
I was 23 at the time living in Montreal, the damage done was unreal, i have family members that live in the dark triangle on the south shore. They were out of power for 3 weeks. Unreal!
I remember it. Was only in grade eight and we were just west of it but 5 hours away my grandpa and great aunts were in the dark and ice. Helpless in a small farm town. The damage was insane, we were so worried constantly. I remember watching every news report I could and just hoping they were okay (no phone line to check in). We were discouraged from traveling to the area But they also couldn't get out. Awful. When it was safe we got them home to us but it was brutal. Thank you for looking into this event.
My husband's power at his house was out for almost 2 weeks just outside of Ottawa. Luckily they had a generator to help with basic necessities. I remember the first time I was in Ottawa years later and driving up highway 416 towards Ottawa you could still see trees down in the forest. It was amazing and sad.
My old home town of Norman, Oklahoma used to get freezing rain at least once a year when I was a kid! I remember seeing bushes with ice completely covering them and the ice on the road was perfect for sledding behind a car!
Watching this with you brings it all back to me, just watching it on the news all day was pretty scary. I have an old boyfriend who is still a friend, who works for Hydro Quebec & I was so scared for him & to be honest everyone who lived from Ontario to Nova Scotia & a lot of my family lived in all those provinces😬 Thank you for doing this, it’s scary, but so important for people to remember this event🙏
The video did not mention how it affected hospitals. I saw a TV show where a surgeon explained the power went out during surgery and the operating team had to finish by flashlight. They had a generator of course but for a little while they had to use flashlights.
I was 18 when this happened, and so this brought back some memories, but I have to say I blocked a lot of it out. While we lost power and eventually lost water, we were able to stay with family who at least had water, and a barbecue to cook food. The repercussions of this storm lasted for weeks in Montreal.
Thanks for sharing, I was in Toronto but my folks were living in Montreal and I didn't grasp the seriousness of the event until I drove home to see all the trees broken along the highway going into the city! It was visible for years after as well.
Man… I remember this so vividly. My brother was born in the last week of January so my mom was dealing with her pregnancy in the middle of this… she was at the hospital with my grandma while my dad, me and the neighbours tended to our homes. At some point he had to keep leaving for work, he was a linesman. Very few of us had generators… most of our community was elderly.. our family store was open to ration food and water for everyone. On the one hand it was amazing to see our community support one another, we’re in a small rural area so we were not priority. We were on our own for a while. We were without power in our corner for about a week and a half. But you were just trapped. It seems like it was always dark. Constant mist in the air. It /smelled/ like ice when you walked out. And it was so… so so quiet, except for the sound of the forest breaking all around you. The sound of trees breaking and exploding is haunting. The forest around our house never looked the same. Even today you can see the trees that bent but never broke, continued to grow in an arch. The forest floor is littered with trees that fell, I haven’t seen the ground there since I was a kid. That’s the year my dad taught me to cut fire wood. That’s the year so many of our farmers lost a good chunk of their livestock… and they never fully recovered. Awful as it was for so many.. it’s an event that, despite how short it was in the grand scheme of things, helped shape me as a person and taught me a lot. It was eye opening, for a kid. Ironically this storm was also the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen.
Tyler, I had my first cell phone in 1995. My father-in-laws property between Kingston and Ottawa was devastated by falling trees. Areas were without power for two months! Every lineman for 100’s of miles went to work in Ontario and Quebec - even American linemen. Peace
My office closed for 2 weeks (it was on the southshore of Mtl), my parents lors electricity for nearly 3 weeks... it was really something. Still remember the eery feeling to walk outside the metro (it was shut down an hour later) to my pitch black neighbourhood.
I remember that time very well. I was 27 years old. I was living in Montreal, in one the most affected area. Hearing the news everyday, always bad news. It was disheartening and scary. The city was dark and so much damage. So many trees broken. My home was mercifully (miraculously) not affected and we still had power, but all the street around us, even just down the street and in front of us, had no electricity. So many people had to move out of their homes and live with relatives and that was sometimes another nightmare stories... These I remember the most, people being out their home for weeks for what should have been a temporary situation.... Now everytime we get freezing rain, It scares me. I still live in Montreal, same region. Glad to know it is a once in a lifetime event....
I was stuck on a train during the 1998 ice storm, stuck outside Montreal. For quite some time. I'm a snow goddess - ice and snow follow me everywhere and I couldn't be happier about it. It is terrible that people lost their lives during this event but it was quite something. Very pretty.
My husband worked at the Civic Hospital in Ottawa. Many staff, especially doctors, were not allowed to leave the hospital because then they couldn’t come back. Some just couldn’t leave because it was too dangerous. We still have our “I Survived the 1998 Ice Storm” certificate that came in the newspaper after it was over!
I was in 10th grade when this hit us. We got a couple weeks off school and some people were without power for over a month. It feels like this just happened a couple years ago but at the same time it's interesting to see all the footage again. Watched it in realtime back then but now it seems so crazy to see.
Our school in Ontario made home schooling kits available for the worst week of the storm. My family in Montreal had oil heating so they did ok. And you need to keep in mind that Montreal has an extremely robust snow removal fleet, they utilize giant snow blowers a fleet of dump trucks and various smaller plows and snow blowers. Parks and undeveloped areas are utilized as dumping grounds (and later used as snow hills).
I just watched this video, and at 18:20 I almost started to giggle when you asked how he could do this. to me he looked like an experienced Curler lol.
I remember vividly , I was 25 at the time and was living in Quebec city. Did I have a lot of friend at the time that was living in Montreal. Since they couldn’t work anyway, ,they did come back to Quebec for a while and stay at my place. We were five in a 3 1/2 room. 😵💫 Hydro-Québec did a monstrous and insane task/repair in a very short time Chapeau bas !
I was in College in Ottawa in 1998 and remember being by myself in my apartment with no heat or power and freezing for a week. My roomates went home to help their parents on their farm who lost almost all their livestock. It was a freezing cold week with a crazy amount of damage. The trees were covered in ice and destroyed. I'll never forget that week.
I actually watched this exact video in the last 2 weeks. I cried. I actually remember very little of this storm. I was about to turn 5 years-old, so the reality of everything is beyond me. I only remember that when we lost power on the south shore, my dad came to get us and took us to Old-Montreal, where he still had power. I remember my cats walking along the top of the kitchen cabinets. That's all. I don't even remember going to my aunts after he finally lost power.
I've watched it a few days back, looking out the window to see freezing rain falling on that day so... was just hoping it would be a thin layer and not too much to cause damage! It appears we only had a few mm so... it was OK after all
I was a kid when it happened. It was insane how literally everything was encased in a layer of ice. Our house didn't have power for 2 weeks and we stayed with my grandmother. A big danger with long power outages like that is the cold - can't heat your home without power, pipes burst from the cold, people with nowhere to go had to burn stuff - I was an oblivious child and just happy to have 2 extra weeks of vacation with my grandma
A lot of people had it harder than me during le verglas. Our struggle living in a rural area without a gas powered generator meant we didn't have running water. We melted snow and boiled water 24/7 on the wood stove. It was quite the operation.
I had forgotten how bad this storm really was. Where I live wasn't directly affected but we watched a lot of this on the news. We've had ice storms here as well, but a somewhat smaller scale. They can be very frightening.
I remember it very well. I was living in the sectors that were hit on the Southshore of Montreal. I was 11 at the time so it was horrible because inches of ice everywhere and no power. But it was also very cool because we got almost two months without school since there was no power or heating...
I was 12 when this happened, I remember it vividly, Montreal was chaotic and scary. No electricity, tree branches everywhere. I almost got smashed by one when I did an errand for my mom to one of the only store that was open in my neighborhood (they had a generator) but it felt on the car next to me. Exactly like what you showed at 7:24. I hope we never have to live something like this again !
Everyone was grabbing their cameras! I was 17 and got yelled at by neighbours worried we would get hurt (and liability) when my friend and I were crawling under trees to do photoshoots with our 35 mm film camera. Also, It was unseasonably warm not cold - if it had been cold then it would have been snow not freezing rain
There was one that was pretty bad in Toronto in 2013. I woke up and the power was out and I had a train to catch and there was a tree blocking my exit with downed power cables touching the walkway in front of me. I climbed a short fence to get out of my yard and walked on ice to the Subway, fortunately I was able to get out of there to a place where it wasn't covered in ice for the duration (and as it was Christmas, it was already my plan to do so). I can't imagine how this storm would have been. When the trees are that thickly covered in ice, the branches or sometimes entire trees start to fall due to the weight, it is very dangerous.
I smashed my arm falling on ice in that one. It was so badly broken, it was bent, and I had to wait hours for an ambulance because I live alone. Snow is beautiful, but the beauty of ice is treacherous.
Yeah, it wasn't as bad as 1998, but it was still pretty bad. We had the luck of it being one and done - Quebec it just kept raining for days. My parents and my sister both had no power- my dad was running the refrigerator with a generator so they wouldn't lose all the food. My sister brought over what she had in her fridge so she wouldn't lose what she had, too. We had all done the pre-Christmas food shop. Meanwhile, my apartment was just fine. I didn't even realize how bad the destruction was until I went outside. I hadn't turned on the TV, either. I love neighbourhoods with mature trees, but those trees always suffer so much when this stuff happens.
I remember this one. We were supposed to go to my mom's house in Toronto for Christmas... but the power was out and would stay out for several more days. Driving up her street was surreal. Trees down everywhere so we had to zigzag our way through the street. Ended up spending Christmas in a hotel room and having Christmas dinner at McDonald's since they were the only ones open... they ended up giving us free apple pie :) Back at home, me and several neighbors all had trees down in our front yards, but our power was only out for about 12 hours so we got off pretty easy.
I remember this because my family was supposed to come over to my house for Christmas. We were at my husband's family gathering when my mom got a hold of someone to say everyone has to come sleep over since we still had power. Then a few days later my sister wanted to take our kids to see Frozen in the movie theater which just felt so surreal at the time. Bushes were still coated in ice.
I was so lucky in that Toronto ice storm that I was only without power for 24 hours. Some of my friends were out for a week and had to leave their homes. I collect lanterns and have lots of kerosene so light and some heat weren't too bad. It was a wakeup call though and I'm much better prepared for something like that now.
I felt lucky that I had moved from Ottawa to Vancouver a little over a year before this happened so I felt like I missed it. However my family had to go through it and they were without power for 9 days south of Ottawa. My parents had a wood stove (which they never had to use before) but it wasn't until the last day that they figured out that it actually had a slide out cover that turned it into a cook top stove! My Dad kicked himself for not figuring it out sooner! The lesson is always try out your emergency plan BEFORE an emergency!
I lived in Montreal for about 10 months in 1986. Way too much snow. It would dump and then melt and then repeat. Lived in Edmonton mostly up until 1984. Winters are long in Edmonton but they don't get so much snow at once like Montreal. Lived more than half my life in the greater Vancouver area now. I really prefer the climate here (temperate rainforest). Love the big trees. There was that day last month when a bit of snow trapped me in Richmond and I could not get home in Surrey for 12 hours. Nothing like the ice storm back east.
I was 12 living in southern Ontario when this happened, it was so scary watching everything on the news and I wasn't even in the heart of it, I can't imagine how terrifying it would have been (with no hydro, many weren't even aware what was to come or how long the storm was to last, or even if their loved ones were safe) so heart breaking
I was a teen when that happened in Ottawa. There were small patches of forests scattered in my neighbourhood. The storm had fused the trees and their branches together and my friends and I were able to jump from one top of a tree to another, 30 feet off the ground. It was like we were on clouds. If only smart phones were a thing then...
I lived on a 1 acxre lot in rural area south of Ottawa when this happened. It was a slow start, looked like just another annoying ice storm. Wasn't that cold out, but after days of rain the temperature plummeted to -22C and the wind picked up. That's when most the damage occurred. 11 trees on my lot fell, amazingly only damaging a small fenced in area at the back of my house. I lived on a long rural road where not one of over a hundred poles that fed the area with power was left standing. They were all down, snapped off a few feet from the ground. They all had to be replaced. It took over 6 weeks to complete because we were rural and low population, it just wasn't a priority. Finally a crew from Detroit arrived to help out. I was one of the lucky ones as I had a fireplace and plenty of wood. Many others didn't. The army setup a camp right next to my place and I had to go through their checkpopint everytime I came and went. What a nice group of folks, helping the locals out with cleanup and general aid. I was one of the few with a four wheel drive so I helped check on others in remote spots in the area. Then came the melt, and without power, basements were flooding. Plenty of damage done there since there was no power to pump the water out. It was quite a period. And its funny, but since then, I've never been without a generator. Its come in handy several times since. I did get many gorgeous pictures of things encased in ice. To this day I still worry every time it freezes rain out.
Remember this storm well. Thankfully we were not affected too much by power outages as we lived in an area that had primarily under ground wiring. I do remember the crackle of the trees as they tried to shed the unwanted ice from their branches. I remember going out to the end of our street to watch the military go by on the highway. To this day you can still see trees along the highway that are bowed from the weight of ice that was on their branches.
I remember driving at night, power out everywhere so no light except our headlights, and the trees covered in thick ice coming down over us because of the weight. I've never experienced such a unique "end of the world yet strangely beautiful" thing since.
Weird watching this as we currently are under a freezing rain storm warning... My aunt and uncle lost power for a month because of that storm. These were tough times. Since then, I always carry cleats in my purse during winter, just in case.
I also lived through this storm. I was finishing my degree at McGill and living in downtown Montreal. I lived across the street from Hotel-Dieu Hospital and my memory is that when they power went out, they turned some generators on, but much of it was in the dark. I was relatively lucky that my power was off for only about 4 days. I lasted two nights in my apartment, sleeping in my coat and under multiple blankets before it got too cold for me. I had friends who lived a few blocks away whose power was restored sooner, so I was fortunate to be able to stay with them for a couple of days. The trees cracking in this video really brought back strong sensory memories for me. I grew up in Saskatchewan and am used to very cold, stormy winter weather (yep, frequent - 40 weather), but this was the craziest winter weather event I have ever seen.
I've live through the worst of that storm... Yeah I'm a Québécois! Was 3 whole weeks with no electricity ... Was still young enough to enjoy the beauty of it, but the nights were so scary with the sounds of those trees falling all over... You're right, we didn't have cells back then, but even if we did, all the towers would of been so full of ice, they would of broken right off too! so no internet or cell would of worked, same as with the electricity. ps. been binge watching your videos tonight, Love them... got yourself a new sub! Thanks!
This was absolutely devastating. Check out the Tornado in Woodstock 1979. This was I do believe one of the biggest tornado distaster in recorded Canadian history as well and it happened just a few miles from where I lived as a kid.
@@hummingbird2254 it was pretty bad. A relative of ours was coming home from the hospital with his young family when it hit. They got to the house but couldn't make it in. This dying man shielded his wife and two young children against the cement steps going up to the door and held on for dear life. It destroyed their house and the rest of the farm but they somehow by the grace of God survived.
Thanks for reacting to my video! It took quite awhile to put this together, I used dozens of news sources from so many places all with different audio, background music which was quite difficult. Ironically, most of us who lived through this storm never saw any of this footage live because we had no power and no TV haha I hope you enjoy part two!
Exactly! I lived in Montréal then, but I was attending university in Sherbrooke, and I drove through this storm on Jan 6 and again on Jan 7. I knew it was bad…but not that bad till my mom called me on Jan 8 or 9 from Chicoutimi, explaining how bad it was as she was privy to it on TV!
Excellent, time consuming too! Thank you! I remember that year, only from watching news from the West Coast.
@@coolwater55 I moved to BC in Aug of that year…don’t miss this type of weather!
@@SheaMF Welcome! 😊
I'm B.C. born, lived most of my life out here.
A bit of time Northern Manitoba and Ontario.
Northern B.C. is cold, same for most of B.C.
I live in lower mainland, hardly any winter. Enjoy.
@@coolwater55 Oh when I say I moved to BC, I spent over 20 years in the tri-cities, and now Abbotsford for almost 4 years. I hear ya! But my first winter here (Dec 98-March 99), and one of my part-time jobs was to work in some schools in New West…showing up and being told there’s no school cause there’s a tiny blanket of snow…mind blowing to me!
I'm a retired lineman on Canada's west coast. A large contingent of BC lineman headed backeast and crews from all over US & Canada joined with Quebec hydro to get power restored
your efforts saved my parent's lives. thank you.
You saved so many lives! Thank you, sir!
Txs for service sir! Greatly appreciate it!!
Yes and thank you very much...won't forget it.
I'm from Montreal. Thx for helping out buddy!
I remember that a good chunk of the grid was completely destroyed. Some people had no heat and no power for weeks. People had no money, because there were no banks and no ATMs for dozens or hundreds of miles. You also couldn't use your credit card, because nothing worked.
Also, there were a bunch of sleazy merchants who started profiteering off of basic necessities. It was so bad that people with snowmobiles would make runs to give food or, at least, sell it at a normal price. Farmers also gave people firewood, no questions asked (because most houses didn't have fireplaces, so it was unlikely that people followed "regulations").
23:59 Sidenote: the PM of Quebec was limping because he had lost his leg to flesh-eating bacteria, not long before that... The flesh-eating bacteria being the crisis the province had just gotten out of before the Ice Storm hit... Yeah, that PM was not having a good time.
Oui vous pouvez le dire !
Mais il a été solide ,très fort...
J' ai beaucoup de respect pour M. Lucien Bouchard...
I remember it so well. No one from Quebec can forget it. I lived on the south shore of Montreal, in an area that the news called "the black triangle". We had no electricity for 3 weeks. Stores were all closed. At some point, the provincial police evacuated us from our home and we had to go in emergency shelters they made in schools. Some area had no electricity for even longer. Those fallen pylones where near my house. At times, we had to be carefull when going outside because of all the power lines on the streets and the falling trees. But at the same time, it was very beautiful. Everything was shining in the sunlight. And everyone helped each other. Fun fact: no burglaries where commited during the period even if most houses were empty and no security system was working. We were too busy for mischief XD
We lost all our mature maples to the ice storm, they couldn’t hold the weight of the ice on them, made me cry. When we got the the 98 ice storm hydro poles fell, you could see hundreds of them laying on the roads. My brother and his workers loaded up the tractors and trucks, chainsaws, food, water blankets everything they could get to help Quebec and drove down to help clean up. In Ontario we had no hydro for five days, thank god most of us have woodstoves or fireplaces to heat and cook on. Remember when you hear the costs, how long ago it was, that was a tremendous amount of money. Maple growers ended up losing businesses. I’m 67 and remember it clear as day. No phone’s working, most roads impassable, you were stuck where you were. We had skidoo’s and drove to schools to get kids home because buses couldn’t run. What a memory!
Dite merci a votre frère et a ces employés s' il vous plait, UN GROS GROS M E R CI
As devastating as that storm was, it was the most beautiful thing I ever saw. When the sun finally came out, the city was completely encased in ice, and glistened like a giant jewel. It was breathtaking.
I remember feeling like this too. Terrified but awe struck at the beauty. The noise that the ice made on the trees sounded like the clinking of crystals. I was in an apartment on East Sherbrooke and the freezing rain hot between the bricks and the mortar of my building. The expansion of the ice caused the brick wall to collapse. Very scary!
@@pennyauld Wow! That's crazy! I was living where the Plateau meets Outremont, near Park Ave. Miraculously, it was a small pocket that didn't lose power!
@@charliesgirl3447 So true for the most part, but I also have some horror stories from my area of a**holes who behaved selfishly and went as far as to hinder efforts by other members of the communities to help each other as well as stores and hotels that decided to engage in price gouging desperate people in their communities.
I'll never forget that beautiful view from the Champlain bridge as I was driving over, it was euphoric.
I was luckily just outside the worst area affected but we did get ice covered and I will agree, it was pretty beautiful after the storm so to speak
So far, this documentary is focused on Montreal. The storm started between Napanee and Kingston in Ontario, and it reached all the way to Nova Scotia. For many years as you drove down the 401 you could see exactly where it started. The broken trees did take years to recover. In Kingston, my home was without power for nine days. I was one of the lucky ones. Some in rural areas were without power for two months. Looking at the news reports of more ice coming, in this video, was funny. For those of us in the midst of the storm, we had no idea, we couldn't turn on the news, it just seemed like it would never end. When it did end, the area was hit with a deep freeze with minus 30C temps for two or three weeks. That made it so dreadfully difficult for workers trying to repair electrical lines. Those of us who lived through that storm will never forget it. We get freezing rain most years, but nothing like that. Every time there is a hint of freezing rain in the forecast, it is still anxiety provoking. We just pray we never have to experience anything like that again.
Yessss. I still get nervous when there's freezing rain (we have some happening now for the third time this winter). I forgot about the deep freeze after the ice was over, it was like nature adding insult to injury.
I lived in Kingston during that storm. When we went out it looked like a war zone.
I lived close to Sherbrooke and we were hit by the ice storm very hard also. My parents in Quebec city had snow, my grandmother died during the ice storm. On the drive from Sherbrooke to Quebec you could see where the ice storm changed to a snow storm.
My grandfathers farm is inside Kingston. Luckily he had multiple fire places in his house and a large supply of wood that he burned through faster than ever without his furnace working. I lived outside Toronto at the time and did not really know what went on. Remember our first visit after power was restored the forest around his property wasn't the same and our climbing tree lost its limbs.
This is the storm that made him decide to sell all his cattle and other animals. He was walking up the hill to check on his animals every day and could not do anything to really help them through it. He was already thinking about retiring his farm but this pushed him to do it sooner. I remember seeing his cattle from the 401 as we drove to visit and one time there were no cattle. The first thing I said was his cattle were missing and asked if the escaped.
I lived in Easter Ontario and went without electricity for 2 and a half weeks with neighbors sharing what generators were around in order to get sump pumps working and get some heat in the houses before everything froze
My dad was responsible of the service department in a generator company near Montreal during the ice storm. The Canadian army was stationed in the parking lot and they were deciding where he could send technicians to. He was working around the clock to help farmers and small businesses by phone, unable to send technicians. It was a very challenging time.
Tell your dad Thank You - it would have been so much worst for the rest of us if it wasn't for all the dedicated people who worked tirelessly to get electricity back to people. All heroes in my book.
@@missmag9591 🧡
My dad was an electrician (retired now) and was installing generators so that businesses could stay opened during this ice storm in the Outaouais region (Gatineau -Ottawa)
At Idaho at the time.
It was also happening in Ottawa. The breaking trees sounded like gun shots and it was nerve wracking. Trying to sleep was not easy due to the breaking trees. There were live power lines down on the roads in my downtown neighbourhood. You had to be careful not to slide into them. My block had power. We were very fortunate! They opened shelters for ppl without heat. Scary stuff.
It was. I was driving down the road to work and a power line fell beside me. Our house loss power but luckly my aunt and nanny did not so we had a place to stay.
We were driving back to Toronto from winter vacation in Florida. We heard about the storm on the radio as we were driving north, but once we passed Ohio it became serious. I lived just north of Toronto in a small city called Barrie. A regular 45 minute drive took us nearly 3.5 hours. The snow was literally waist-high.
I grew up in rural Eastern Ontario, 2 hours outside of Ottawa. We had freezing rain for the better part of 3 days straight. This ice storm left people at home without power for 17+ days. No heat, no ability to feed themselves, no water. I will forever have the sound of ice caked tree branches giving way and falling on us as a core memory
. Seeing pictures of power line towers crumpled under the weight of the ice they were covered in will stay with me for the rest of my life.
I was watching this video with tears in my eyes. I lived this, I’m from Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, in the Dark Triangle. We evacuated our home, lost so many (my grand-father died at that time). So hard to see this again, but I’m grateful I survived this dark time. We can still see the damaged, even today. My house is in a forest. With maple trees.
I was living (still am) in cowansville at the time and my daughter was 2.5 years old. We ended up in Massey Vanier High School for 2 weeks. It was terrible!
I was pregnant/give birth with my 2nd & lived through this disaster. An hour south of Montreal. 10 days of blackness, shelters & a lot crying. Couldn't even go home with our new baby, cause of damage pipes that iced our kitchen and basement. Still get scared every freakin' January while having the best birthday party for my boy
That's brutal being pregnant. I was in Chateauguay when it happened. Can't imagine having a new born in that mess.
Bless you and your birthday boy 🫶🏻
Pregnant and then gave birth?! During this?! You are a God-tier mom!!
Pauvre puce, ça du être horrible. Quand ils ont annoncé le verglas a Noël j'ai comme freaké un peu
@@_Julie_Bee On dirais qu'on a un mois de janvier qui veux fêter ses 25 ans de verglas... ils en annoncent encore pour moi (Estrie) ce soir et demain...
I'm from rural Ontario. We heard birch and pine trees literally explode. It sounded like a shot gun going off. You can still see the aftermath when travelling down the country roads.
Wow 😮
@@jules3048 I was much younger as well, so my recollection is fuzzy. I do recall some poor French guy on the evening news, looking a lot like the cartoon character Yvon of the Yukon and literally burning his money in his fireplace to try to keep his house a little warmer. He was wearing multiple blankets and his breath hung in the air. Not until Game of Thrones did I see another camera capture a dark icy hell so vividly. I can't remember how many people died...
I was in oxford mills, south of Ottawa.
the cracking all night eh
I was back to the Cornwall area in 2015 and could see the damage. So sad.
Hey Tyler
I was a soldier deployed to the ice storm. We hijacked a locomotive and brought it into the town to power the local shelter and a few other building and used it as a large generator. We had to do patrols at night using night vision googles to check homes for burglers ect because people were evaluated.What you don't hear about is how this effected some people like farmers that lost all the animals we also called in American hydro crews to assist as we couldn't handle something of this magnitude on our own.
yes the farmers were terribly affected. Lots of animals froze to death.
Thank you for your service! ✌️
Thank you constance I enjoyed my time very much in the forces and just retired after 25 years
@Hawkins on the trail I salute you, both my siblings are veterans.
Is that the one you took off the tracks and drove down the frozen road in Lachine? Canada, when things get tough, don't underestimate the brains and the testicals of Canadians!!!! LOL
You need to view about the Snowmageddon storm in 2020 on the East Coast, the amount of snow we received was unreal. We got 17 feet of snow in one snow.
One thing we learned personally was we got a generator run by gas. I always have a month worth of meals in the freezer, fill the tub and jugs with water, bought hurricane lanterns, always stay well stocked up. Be prepared the next time!
I lived it, in Montreal, and with some friend when decided to go down to where the worst happen, and help the struggling folks that had worst with my winter survival skills and friends, we sit down one night talk and all decided to do something and we did.
That's beautiful. Thank you - 25 years later, but still - thanks.
@@jq8974 That ok, we almost didn't because the call service were adamant that we didn't. But it nothing compared to some other. everybody kind of help each other in some way or a other. maybe it was not obvious to everybody, but we did. like i remember my father and mother and in my neighbourhoods were everybody would go door by door just checking on people if the were okay or not. We all had very or barely no living condition. if you remember we all help before the snow fall the last day shovel everybody roof but even that didn't help much some sheltter even had there roof fall because of not be in time to do all that. There was even some road off like the 40 simply because it was deadly to drive on it. so even hydro and the authority had issue servicing help
I lived in the Black Triangle during that storm, the worst hit area on the south shore of Montreal. We were 1 month without power. We could not get cash from the bank, no food, no gaz. It has marked me for the rest of my life. From then on, every time they announce freezing rain, I get scared.
I lived in Trois-Riviere back then and it was scared of falling branches on the ground. It was like shattering glass. I had power, but it was flickering a lot.
I had a contract in Rougemont at the time. That whole area was bleak, but also mesmerizing. The devastation amongst the trees was enormous and remained visible for a very long time. Rang du Cordon was covered in a thick crust of ice which remained for a long time. One day, while heading to work, I stopped to take pictures of a American crew installing new hydro poles, they all stopped temporarily and struck a pose with their big orange truck. Even in the worst times you have to try to maintain a certain levity...
🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
The most eerie part of it all, to me , was EVERY THING was so gray. It was like being on a different planet. Nothing looked familiar. What a strange scary feeling. I will never forget that ice storm as long as I live.
same but i was lucky, we were lucky enough to live in the open with very little trees around, and could afford a generator to power our house for short durations.
Plus we had a snowmobile and no school and i was like 6 or 7 so i was happy without knowing how bad it actually was.
24:05 oh friend :( he didn't told people to stay home , he told them to go out and seek refuge . A LOT of older folks were found frozen in their home sadly.
I was 14 when it happened and it still feel unreal , my parents were renting a big apartment with a wood stove at that time , we took in a lot of people for nearly 2 months
It lasted for 21 days before we could go back home. My daughter was one month old. We left our house. The electrical posts were all fallen in the roads. I ended up in a hospital while my husband had 5 kids to take care of with my mother. The ice was 1" to 2" thick everywhere.
How did you end up at an hospital?
I've lived in Nova Scotia my whole life. I was a kid when this ice storm hit Quebec... and there were a lot of people/adults that were worried that once this storm got unlocked from being over that area that it may come our way. We did get a little bit of ice, but nothing compared to Montreal and southern Quebec.
Quebec helped us out a few years ago actually when we had the worst ice storm Halifax has ever experienced. There were about 3 inches of ice on every road, side walk, trees, buildings, etc. We did not have the equipment to get the ice off the roads. Montreal let our city borrow their ice removal vehicles to clear our roads... I think they started keeping vehicles like that after this ice storm in 1998. Our ice storm just a few years ago happened in February, and it was a slow buildup over multiple weeks. We had 3 or 4 separate ice storms over the course of about 2 weeks. Halifax shut down, transit buses were taken off the roads, many businesses were closed down. Lots of places without power. What Quebec learned from that ice storm of 1998, helped us get through ours!
We received a lot of help during this period, so it's only fair we helped other provinces. Many lessons were learned. HydroQuebec namely discovered the hard way what the weaknesses of its network were. Old electric towers were redesigned in the "black triangle" to better handle this type of situation.
I remember this storm. I was visiting a friend in Montreal for 2 weeks when it happened. I was only there for the first 2 days of that disaster but OMG, it was a mess. My dad had business in Montreal so the plan was he would pic me up & we would drive back home to N.B. We saw the damage. Everything was covered in at least 1 to 2 inches of ice. When the sun finally came out & it reflected on the ice, it was a weird combination of beautiful, but terrifying.
I've lived in N.B. my whole life so I remember the Nova Scotia Ice storms. N.B. didn't get hit as bad, but it was still a mess. We got a generator after that storm.
I'll clown a guy from Quebec all day long, but when shit actually hits the fan like this? Time to show up and get shit done
Nova Scotia is awesome!!! (Peter, Halifax)
Interesting that I am an hour away in Truro and do not remember that ice storm a few years ago. It was likely snow here. We get freezing rain off and on here every winter now. But nothing like the massive ice storm that hit Ontario and Quebec, thankfully. We can have our own weather disasters with hurricanes coming up the Atlantic! Halifax really can have such different weather from us here in the more inland areas an hour away...milder winters, cooler summers.
I lived in the ICE storm of 98 ,
- lived through the 100 year flood of Calgary , Alberta in 2013
-and the Fort McMurray Fire 🔥 of 2016.
The most interesting thing was in Montreal the city pushed a train engine along a city street to a hospital and used it as a generator to power the hospital .
Wow!!!
Remind me to avoid where YOU live.
I can add to that the massive winter blizzard of early March 1971, we were snowed in for days in Montreal
I worked downtown Calgary that weekend it flooded... It was wild, but also weirdly peaceful after the cops finished evacuating EVERYONE... Being able to stand in the middle of 4th ave, not a vehicle in sight in any direction, not a pedestrian, nothing... It was WILD...
As someone who lived through this as a telecommunications technician, thank you for bringing this to the masses of those who never knew about this. Yourself included. Thank you Tyler
I was an insurance storm adjuster who worked on this storm. One interesting experience was inspecting the inside of a home that had been without power for weeks. The warm air in a home had condensed (humidity/moisture-wise) into the carpets when the heat was lost which made them rigid - and the carpets could snap when walked upon. It was truly bizarre.
Thank you for reacting Tyler. I am from Eastern Ontario and experienced this storm. Not as bad as Quebec.. but bad enough to have lost power for a few days.... so no heat during that time either. In my house with five layers on trying to stay warm. Also no toilet as the water in it froze. No water in my house as the pipes froze too. No cooking to make warm food for your belly or a tea/coffee to warm you up. It was awful. The second wave of the storm took siding off my house and shingles off my roof. I just kept remembering the awful news updates and how badly some areas like Montreal were suffering. It was so scary.. but compared to them.. we were the lucky ones. 🥺☹ Oh and you are right.. we walked out the door and it was like a movie. It felt so surreal. I mean we get ice storms at least once a year in my town.. but it had never been like that.. and still to this day.... ice storms seem like nothing.. compared to what happened to us in 98. To be honest we are very lucky there were not more deaths than stated. Mother nature is not to be underestimated!!! 🥶😱❄☄⛈
I’m in eastern Ontario too, east of Ottawa, I didn’t lose power at all during this storm. My neighbours across the road from me lost power for five days, I had four families, with their children and animals stay with us…My friend who is about half an hour east of me lost power for 59 days, she was in the swath where all the power lines were downed for miles and miles…We brought them our generator and gas, they didn’t want to leave their home unattended due to break-ins in the area. I made the drive out with gas every other day…
I was 16 at the time. I remember we were supposed to go back to school on my 17th birthday, but the school had transformed into a shelter for people without power and who had no source of heat or generator. We were fortunate enough that my parents house was on the same electrical line than the hospital. So the longest we were without power was about 3-4 hours. For weeks we didn’t go back to school, and I remember my parents house being filled with uncles, ants and cousins, and how it was like a super long holiday break for us kids.
Now I get super emotional watching this with my adult eyes. I understand a lot more why we saw our parents being so worried.
Welp, this is eerie. Staring out my front window watching the ice mist coat the tree in my front yard, listening to the voice of CBCs Lloyd Robertson describing the ice disaster I lived through. You do a great job, Tyler.
Lloyd Robertson was CTV.
This is a time I will never forget. I was without power for 14 days and had to use 5-gallon pails to keep my basement from flooding because it was where my only heat source was located. My family and I had to take shifts bailing out the sump pump, because all the ice on the ground was overwhelming our weeping tile. On top of all that we had a pet iguana we had to keep warm so a lot of my off time was spent with the iguana in my shirt so my body could keep him warm enough. I was never so sore or tired in my life and I really feared for my family safety. At the end of 14 days, roads where still full of ice and we couldn't move our car to go get food... we had to ration our food for the last 2 or 3 days before we got power and were able to make arrangements to get more food in the house. I also had to get a second sump pump because the one we had would run non-stop until the ice reseeded.
Hey Tyler! I am a Montrealer, born and raised, so I got to experience it first hand! I was 10 years old when this happened. I remember at first being happy school was closed. I remember how beautiful I thought the icy trees were, I remember the sound the tingling of the branches made, but also how silent it was outside. I remember my dad, who was working for the city, doing double shifts and even more, he'd come back to sleep a few hours and then go back to cleanup the branches and trees fallen everywhere, for weeks, we didn't see him much if at all. I remember we were not allowed to go outside, and that if we needed to get food, batteries, or bottled water (I think at some point we didn't have running water but I might remember wrong), everything was rationed and not easy to find. I don't think we lost power for too long, I remember one particular night we slept with our coats on but that's it... We were very lucky we didn't loose electricity like those on the south shore. I don't think my child mind realized how devastating that storm was for so many people. But I know it marked a whole generation, and whenever they announce icy rain nowadays, we're all worried. My dad took incredible pictures while doing his job, we got to see how destructive yet beautiful looking trees covered in ice could be! Everyone who lived through it, will never forget. For me personally, it helped me cope during the pandemic lockdowns. Like at least, we were safe. But yeah. What a life changing event this was! Thank you for watching this, reacting to it and sharing with us! Can't believe it's already been 25 years!
Montreal is a highly-treed city and is known for this. Many trees that were hundreds of years old. It was truly a tragedy to see so many trees destroyed.
I lived in Montreal during this. A huge tree fell on our house, damaging the garage roof. We were able to stay inside with our wood burning fireplace, and slept near it with sleeping bags. We were without power for almost 3 weeks. The eerie darkness and non stop sounds of popping and crashing outside I'll never forget.
You lived in the garage? Times were rough back then 🙄
Fun fact - I had just moved from Ottawa to Southern Ontario (specifically Port Dover) a few months prior to this storm. One day we returned from shopping to find 20 messages on our answering machine. All of them were from my in-laws checking to see if we were ok, if we had power, etc. etc… We had no idea Ottawa was experiencing a severe Ice storm. Where we were it was so warm we were wearing shorts - in January!!! The news was reporting that it had been so warm that tulips were starting to come up in the gardens!! Port Dover is only an 8 hour drive from Ottawa.
Oh yeah- Us Canadians measure distance in time. It’s not x kilometres away, it’s 30 minutes away. lol
Happy Friday the 13th! If you’re still there.
yeah i was in ottawa. we had so much snow and ice, literally had to climb out the second floor windows to get out.
@@JamesMichaelDoyle i s'pose that depends on where in Ottawa you were. at Somerset & Preston, we were encased in ice but the snow deposit was standard issue & we still had power (even though the weight of ice on the standpipe was peeling it away from the building) until a routine Ottawa Hydro check pronounced it unsafe & cut it. we ended staying with a friend a coupla blocks away but we had a fieplace so we could still go home & cook on the fire for the few days we were powerless.
What Tyler doesn't realize it that ice storms are caused by warm weather, not cold. So I'm not surprised by your experience. I honestly don't remember my own experience of that winter. I remember the ice storm on the news, of course. And I was in Toronto in Jan 99 for the snowmageddon!☺
Hey! I lived on Peacock Point as a kid. Lakeshore road.
I lived through this. I live in Ottawa, and we were smack in the middle of this. The destruction was beyond anything you could imagine.
Right there with ya, Brother. Went in to work every day, as the boss wouldn't accept a little ice as an excuse.
@@Kuado That sounds familiar. My boss just decided to go to his cabin in the midst of it, and refused to let us go home, where we struggled to deal with power outages, which could lead to basement flooding. What a jerk! I was so happy when he got fired a year later.
I was a little kid at the time but I remember clearly the sight of our neighbor's tree split in two from the weight of the ice on its limbs.
From Ottawa as well and fefinitely the worst event ever...so much destruction
@@000snow000 it was scary, for sure
The ice storm extended from Eastern Ontario across Quebec to the Maritimes. Montreal had the most coverage but all areas were devestated.
I remember this. Listening to CBC radio with follow ups on the terrible conditions. But it's true that it looks like Narnia or even more beautiful with the ice covering the tree branches. The bad thing is once it starts to melt ,ya better stay away from slanted roof top or under trees. That beauty can do some serious damage.
Walking home from Downtown Montreal in the dark (no street lights, not even traffic lights) was quite eerie. What hit me the most was that everyone was doing everything in an orderly manner, stoically, silently. I think I heard a car's horn only ONCE during the 2h walk (wasn't *that* far, but walking in 3" of pebbly/slushy/icy snow isn't easy, and many sidewalk were full of tree branches one had to go around)
Gotta say i'm pretty happy you reacted to this! I lived in on the south shore of montreal. I was 8 years old. We didnt have power for 2 weeks and luckily we had a cast iron stove in the basement so we stayed warm and boiled water there to cook and fill the bathtub with hot water. the first day of black out me and my family would sit on the couch looking outside the window and watch the electricity transformer explode one by one in the horizon until the one in our backyard exploded. was pretty insane seeing those bright greenish light pop up in the horizon as a kid.
I remember this well. Luckily those of us in southern Ontario were not affected. But it was heartbreaking to see what fellow Canadians were going through. I remember that utility crews from all over Canada and even U.S. crews went into the disaster areas doing what they could to restore power for people. It was horrendous.
We didn't even have support for the first bit because the area was too remote to access... 2 weeks no power not knowing when it was coming back.. was a crazy time. Luckily rural canadians are great at supporting one another!!
South Eastern Ontario was hit too.I live in Kingston and our city had no power for 5 days.
Southeastern Ontario was definitely affected! My aunt (in her 70’s) was living in Avery small rural community just 15 minutes northwest of Kingston. She had 1/2 inch of ice over everything. No power, phone, running water, heat for 5 days and she and my disabled uncle were trapped in their home. No army to help like in the cities east of her. It was fortunate that she had all sorts of camping equipment as she’d go deer hunting every fall. She set up in the attached garage, cooked out there, had lanterns for light and they slept on cots in a tent in her garage as she could heat it a bit without C O2 building up. Didn’t see a soul or hear from any resources like police or fire, or anyone for the entire 5 days. Not like Montreal. Luckily I was in Toronto where it was just a rain event. I was able to let the Kingston police aware of her situation, but it was still a long time for them to seek her out. I’d say she was affected!
My house in the country was out of power for 2 weeks.
In my city in south-eastern ontario we had 3 weeks without power and the army deployed on the streets...
I was out of the country when this happened, and only saw a few things on the news. Thanks for finding and sharing this!
I was working as 911 operator in Montréal during that ice storm. We were getting so many distress calls and within the first few hours (the calls started coming in around10pm and around 4am the first night) there where no more emergency vehicules or crews available to send. Every police car, every ambulance ,every fire truck, every Hydro-Québec truck, every City vehicules were out helping, and still more and more calls were coming in. It took days before we could send help to some people. And it took a few days before the army came in to help. For the rest of the week we were sleeping, eating, showering at work so we could work for as many hours as possible and still it wasn't enough to help everyone. This video sure brings back a lot of vivid memories.
The sound of the tree cracking and collapsing bring back so many memories of that times. I was hearing that sound continuously during the nights for multiple days. Lots of ppl lost their homes because of generators running 24/7 and fireplaces that were never cleaned.
One of the things about the ice storm is you didn't really appreciate the loss of trees until the next summer when so much of the canopy was gone. Streets that used to almost be a tunnel under the tree canopy were suddenly open to the skies.
It was the same in Toronto after the 2013 ice storm, all of the canopy was gone and all the streets that used to be tunnels of trees felt so weird and open that summer
The great ice storm of 1998 is one of those historical events where you remember where you were and what you were doing, like 9/11 or the Kennedy assassination.
Personally, I had it easy. Me and the wife had just weeks earlier moved into our new home. We lost power for maybe three hours. She was four months pregnant. We had a gas fireplace and we snuggled in front of it. My sister on the other hand, after nearly a week without power, moved with her husband to our parents house and stayed there for two weeks. We all lived in the Ottawa area and we all had different experiences.
it wasn't something you want to repeat though was it.
I lived in northern Ontario at the time. My parents coincidentally booked a trip to Florida at this exact time so we missed it all 😂😂. Talk about good timing
3:51 BTW we take out our states at this point and just skate down the road, done it many times
I remember watching this on the news, safe on the west coast of Canada. Describe tears to my eyes again, I seen a smaller version of an ice storm in New Brunswick when we passed through on our way to Nova Scotia many years back, it looks beautiful, but can turn deadly. Thank you for the video. I will be watching the next one.
I didn't knew this documentary existed, it's kind of amazing because I'm used to a lot of Quebec's history being told in French (as this affected in large part Quebec). The 1998 ice storm, for those that lived through it, is a bit like a 9/11 type of event where we all remember where we were and how it went down. I was a teenager back then, I had just gone back to high school after the holiday break on that first day of the ice storm, and back then school closures due to weather were not quite as common (let alone preventive as today) so the day had been the usual other than the weather. But by the evening, it wasn't very pretty out there and my dad who worked at a restaurant, from around 5 until closure near midnight, had been told to stay home. We lost power that first night around 7 or 8 pm and from there it was just dark and cold for the rest of the week. We all huddled into one of the bedrooms and lit candles, my dad invented some sort of heating device on the go with an aluminum plate and a coat hanger, basically using it to radiate the heat the candle gave away. It wasn't much but the bedroom was slightly warmer than the rest of the house and that's how we managed to get through. Not much food options since all we had to warm anything up was a propane stove for camping that we'd use in the kitchen with a window open to not get intoxicated by the co2. And you have to remember that back then social media didn't exist, cellphones weren't really a thing, for most people the radio was the only source of information. It wasn't until power started coming back and we could watch tv again that we started to realize the size of the devastation!
landlines worked even without power if they were wired
@@puffyjo but telephone poles went down too
@@donna-leedesaulniers2449 not where i was in the sud ouest
In Baie d'Urfe it was a couple of weeks 😲
Wow! What a story! BC er here
I was in Air cadets back 1998 (my last year i was 18). we were doing cadet training program in Drummonville,Qc when this happened we were given 2 choices, head home or help out. we stayed for 7 days chipping hard thick ice off pls doors get them out. I will never forget this.
Cool to see an American learn about this for the first time. I was 5 when the ice storm hit. I have vague memories of my parents anxiously discussing extended family and one extremely vivid memory of sitting on a mattress on the floor with my siblings in the dark playing with Fuzzy Felts (anyone else remember those toys?). Even now the ice storm is referred to in my area in casual conversation all the time. E.g. 'Yeah, we lost power, pretty bad storm, but not like the ice storm.' Watching your videos has really brought to my attention how many references are regional - nobody around here would blink if I mentioned 'the ice storm' but you've never even heard of it. Odd the things we take for granted!
I live in Montreal and we got an ice storm a bit like that one not long ago and we lost electricity for like 3-4 days
Personal story here. My grandparents were snowbirds and had come home for Christmas and New Year’s. They were on one of the last flights out of the city before they cancelled all flights. When we lost power at home in Rosemont, we basically moved into their house for a week or so as there was food in the house and they were in close proximity to two hospitals and were on a priority hydro circuit. They never lost power once. Dad managed to grab one of the few generators from his place of work and was able to get the (natural gas) furnace started at home. So he was running back and forth between houses two or three times a day, to make sure the heat was on, pipes were not frozen, the generator had gas and was still there (as people were very desperate and generator theft was a problem).. I remember looking out the window one night and watching the sky flashing and flickering blue, almost like long sustained lightning. I now know today it was transformers on the hydro poles blowing up and wires arcing, but man it was so cool to watch. I was only starting grade school then, but will never forget the wild ride that was ice storm ‘98.
I still remember that storm. I lived in the country side and it was spooky AF going out at night time and just listening to all the trees cracking and snapping all around you.
Hey Tyler, as you will see in the second part, I lived in Dark Triangle.
The week after the Montreal Storm was over and back with power (mostly) whereas we still had no power, no heat ... and no jobs to go back to.
The government gave us some money to help out and asked creditors that had money owing to be patient due to the circumstances.
We were in the dark for another 5 weeks after the initial storm... I have so many stories to tell.
More in the next part...
i was twelve and i recently just watched the worst storm in Canadas history recently and it brought back a lot of memories. i remember how insignificant i felt watching those giant hydro power lines come crumbling down like they we're made of straw it was fun but it was also intimidating, i lived in eastern Ontario and we didnt get it nearly as bad
Around Montreal we had it so bad.... Some places a bit more east had no power for weeks
I remember thinking this was so bad , and spending weeks watching the weather channel, hoping that there did not develop a polar vortex and drop to 20 or 30 below
Hahaha! I was also 12..but lived in new Brunswick! Had no power for a week..and no school!
I was in the west after getting hammered by a normal blizzard and felt much the same looking out at the power lines
Was also 12, in Ontario lol I know I would have viewed it much much differently if I were an adult when it happened!
I was 8 years old and this storm is one of my favourite memories from childhood. We lived rurally and ended up cut off but because we used wood stoves and had lots of wood, our home was warm and cozy. I thought needing candles for light was super fun and we all spent a lot of time in front of the woodstove doing puzzles together. I loved the unusual days and spending all the time with my parents and big brothers and sister. The ice layers outside were fun as a kid.
I’m sure it must have been so much more stressful for my parents, the adults in charge and actually responsible for things… but as a kid in our home, it made amazing memories.
Yeah, I was 4 yo. I remember having fun with the ice outside. That's pretty much all I can remember XD
Dang! Having a 3yr old of my own, you must have had some amazingly strong parents to make those days GOOD memories for y'all !
I was 14, my brother was 10, and I have fond memories of this storm. No school for two weeks, playing outside, playing games with the candlelight. We spent this time at my grand parents, because they had a fireplace. I didn't understand at that time how dire the situation was.
We had to leave Montreal. Our apartment didn't get electricity back until 3 weeks later. And there was zero electricity. Gas stations, hospitals, everything was dark. I volunteered in providing community meals, and everyone came, regardless of income, age, etc. we lost hundreds of thousands of trees.
I remember packing relief boxes for this as a kid. I drew pictures on the boxes... which were labelled in English, so those who didn't speak English could understand what was in the box. I was 8. A few years ago, it was Ontario's turn to get one. Not nearly as severe as the '98 storm, but we had trees literally falling apart over our heads. A walk outside was a walk in peril.
Yes, I remember our ice storm -which was a mini version of what Montreal/southern Quebec went through. Ours was scary enough but what our neighbours went through - I don’t know how they survived it. I pray the infrastructure has been rebuilt to handle ice storms better in the future.
It's interesting your comment about at least they could light a candle. One thing that started to happen was people were being asphyxiated from the chemicals that were in some cheaper candles. At the time I worked for a large Candle Company that used natural products and we ended up shipping over a million candles to try and help people. I couldn't believe it but it turns out some people made candles using lead in their wicks!
Just found your channel. I really admire your sincere interest in Canadians and Canadian events. Much like this ice storm from my early thirties, to the other events and aspects of Canadian life, this reminds me of how a proud and resilient Canadian I am. I look forward to watching all of your videos and being reminded what a great and unique country this is.
Thanks, dude.
You never worry about food going bad in the winter at least. My province got hit with a really bad snowstorm as well a few years ago. It snowed really hard for about four days straight. I think about half of it was out of power. Took about a week to get power back. I remember some of the rural areas didn't have power for close to a month.
I lived through it, we were in the suburbs of Montreal. I was 13 years old. Absolute hell freezing over type stuff..no heat no water no power and extreme cold for weeks because the whole power grid was destroyed.
I was in highschool and they evacuated everyone at 1pm and took everyone home. I'll always remember that day.
I was 23 at the time living in Montreal, the damage done was unreal, i have family members that live in the dark triangle on the south shore. They were out of power for 3 weeks. Unreal!
I remember it. Was only in grade eight and we were just west of it but 5 hours away my grandpa and great aunts were in the dark and ice. Helpless in a small farm town. The damage was insane, we were so worried constantly. I remember watching every news report I could and just hoping they were okay (no phone line to check in). We were discouraged from traveling to the area But they also couldn't get out. Awful. When it was safe we got them home to us but it was brutal. Thank you for looking into this event.
My husband's power at his house was out for almost 2 weeks just outside of Ottawa. Luckily they had a generator to help with basic necessities. I remember the first time I was in Ottawa years later and driving up highway 416 towards Ottawa you could still see trees down in the forest. It was amazing and sad.
My old home town of Norman, Oklahoma used to get freezing rain at least once a year when I was a kid! I remember seeing bushes with ice completely covering them and the ice on the road was perfect for sledding behind a car!
Watching this with you brings it all back to me, just watching it on the news all day was pretty scary. I have an old boyfriend who is still a friend, who works for Hydro Quebec & I was so scared for him & to be honest everyone who lived from Ontario to Nova Scotia & a lot of my family lived in all those provinces😬 Thank you for doing this, it’s scary, but so important for people to remember this event🙏
The video did not mention how it affected hospitals. I saw a TV show where a surgeon explained the power went out during surgery and the operating team had to finish by flashlight. They had a generator of course but for a little while they had to use flashlights.
it will be explained later on... it's a documentary about the Ice Storm and last 40 minutes or so, he had to split it in parts!
I remember this story being on the news and being in awe of that surgery staff
I was 18 when this happened, and so this brought back some memories, but I have to say I blocked a lot of it out. While we lost power and eventually lost water, we were able to stay with family who at least had water, and a barbecue to cook food. The repercussions of this storm lasted for weeks in Montreal.
Thanks for sharing, I was in Toronto but my folks were living in Montreal and I didn't grasp the seriousness of the event until I drove home to see all the trees broken along the highway going into the city! It was visible for years after as well.
Man… I remember this so vividly. My brother was born in the last week of January so my mom was dealing with her pregnancy in the middle of this… she was at the hospital with my grandma while my dad, me and the neighbours tended to our homes. At some point he had to keep leaving for work, he was a linesman.
Very few of us had generators… most of our community was elderly.. our family store was open to ration food and water for everyone. On the one hand it was amazing to see our community support one another, we’re in a small rural area so we were not priority. We were on our own for a while. We were without power in our corner for about a week and a half.
But you were just trapped. It seems like it was always dark. Constant mist in the air. It /smelled/ like ice when you walked out. And it was so… so so quiet, except for the sound of the forest breaking all around you.
The sound of trees breaking and exploding is haunting. The forest around our house never looked the same. Even today you can see the trees that bent but never broke, continued to grow in an arch. The forest floor is littered with trees that fell, I haven’t seen the ground there since I was a kid.
That’s the year my dad taught me to cut fire wood.
That’s the year so many of our farmers lost a good chunk of their livestock… and they never fully recovered.
Awful as it was for so many.. it’s an event that, despite how short it was in the grand scheme of things, helped shape me as a person and taught me a lot. It was eye opening, for a kid.
Ironically this storm was also the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen.
Tyler, I had my first cell phone in 1995.
My father-in-laws property between Kingston and Ottawa was devastated by falling trees.
Areas were without power for two months!
Every lineman for 100’s of miles went to work in Ontario and Quebec - even American linemen.
Peace
My office closed for 2 weeks (it was on the southshore of Mtl), my parents lors electricity for nearly 3 weeks... it was really something. Still remember the eery feeling to walk outside the metro (it was shut down an hour later) to my pitch black neighbourhood.
I remember that time very well. I was 27 years old. I was living in Montreal, in one the most affected area. Hearing the news everyday, always bad news. It was disheartening and scary. The city was dark and so much damage. So many trees broken. My home was mercifully (miraculously) not affected and we still had power, but all the street around us, even just down the street and in front of us, had no electricity. So many people had to move out of their homes and live with relatives and that was sometimes another nightmare stories... These I remember the most, people being out their home for weeks for what should have been a temporary situation....
Now everytime we get freezing rain, It scares me. I still live in Montreal, same region.
Glad to know it is a once in a lifetime event....
I remember this storm but was not directly affected by it. But my dad brought all the generators the rental place he worked at had to Montreal.
I was stuck on a train during the 1998 ice storm, stuck outside Montreal. For quite some time. I'm a snow goddess - ice and snow follow me everywhere and I couldn't be happier about it. It is terrible that people lost their lives during this event but it was quite something. Very pretty.
My husband worked at the Civic Hospital in Ottawa. Many staff, especially doctors, were not allowed to leave the hospital because then they couldn’t come back. Some just couldn’t leave because it was too dangerous.
We still have our “I Survived the 1998 Ice Storm” certificate that came in the newspaper after it was over!
I was in 10th grade when this hit us. We got a couple weeks off school and some people were without power for over a month. It feels like this just happened a couple years ago but at the same time it's interesting to see all the footage again. Watched it in realtime back then but now it seems so crazy to see.
Our school in Ontario made home schooling kits available for the worst week of the storm. My family in Montreal had oil heating so they did ok.
And you need to keep in mind that Montreal has an extremely robust snow removal fleet, they utilize giant snow blowers a fleet of dump trucks and various smaller plows and snow blowers. Parks and undeveloped areas are utilized as dumping grounds (and later used as snow hills).
I just watched this video, and at 18:20 I almost started to giggle when you asked how he could do this. to me he looked like an experienced Curler lol.
I remember vividly , I was 25 at the time and was living in Quebec city. Did I have a lot of friend at the time that was living in Montreal. Since they couldn’t work anyway, ,they did come back to Quebec for a while and stay at my place. We were five in a 3 1/2 room. 😵💫 Hydro-Québec did a monstrous and insane task/repair in a very short time
Chapeau bas !
I was in College in Ottawa in 1998 and remember being by myself in my apartment with no heat or power and freezing for a week. My roomates went home to help their parents on their farm who lost almost all their livestock. It was a freezing cold week with a crazy amount of damage. The trees were covered in ice and destroyed. I'll never forget that week.
Aww, man 😭
I actually watched this exact video in the last 2 weeks. I cried. I actually remember very little of this storm. I was about to turn 5 years-old, so the reality of everything is beyond me. I only remember that when we lost power on the south shore, my dad came to get us and took us to Old-Montreal, where he still had power. I remember my cats walking along the top of the kitchen cabinets. That's all. I don't even remember going to my aunts after he finally lost power.
Yea I just watched it this weekend too.
I've watched it a few days back, looking out the window to see freezing rain falling on that day so... was just hoping it would be a thin layer and not too much to cause damage! It appears we only had a few mm so... it was OK after all
I was a kid when it happened. It was insane how literally everything was encased in a layer of ice. Our house didn't have power for 2 weeks and we stayed with my grandmother. A big danger with long power outages like that is the cold - can't heat your home without power, pipes burst from the cold, people with nowhere to go had to burn stuff - I was an oblivious child and just happy to have 2 extra weeks of vacation with my grandma
A lot of people had it harder than me during le verglas. Our struggle living in a rural area without a gas powered generator meant we didn't have running water. We melted snow and boiled water 24/7 on the wood stove. It was quite the operation.
Well Tyler, you made me laugh out loud within the first 3 minutes of a video about a horrible ice storm which I remember. Subscribed!
I had forgotten how bad this storm really was. Where I live wasn't directly affected but we watched a lot of this on the news. We've had ice storms here as well, but a somewhat smaller scale. They can be very frightening.
I remember it very well. I was living in the sectors that were hit on the Southshore of Montreal.
I was 11 at the time so it was horrible because inches of ice everywhere and no power. But it was also very cool because we got almost two months without school since there was no power or heating...
I was 12 when this happened, I remember it vividly, Montreal was chaotic and scary. No electricity, tree branches everywhere. I almost got smashed by one when I did an errand for my mom to one of the only store that was open in my neighborhood (they had a generator) but it felt on the car next to me. Exactly like what you showed at 7:24. I hope we never have to live something like this again !
18:31, when you grow up in Eastern Canada, you get really good at the shuffle and slide.
Everyone was grabbing their cameras! I was 17 and got yelled at by neighbours worried we would get hurt (and liability) when my friend and I were crawling under trees to do photoshoots with our 35 mm film camera. Also, It was unseasonably warm not cold - if it had been cold then it would have been snow not freezing rain
There was one that was pretty bad in Toronto in 2013. I woke up and the power was out and I had a train to catch and there was a tree blocking my exit with downed power cables touching the walkway in front of me. I climbed a short fence to get out of my yard and walked on ice to the Subway, fortunately I was able to get out of there to a place where it wasn't covered in ice for the duration (and as it was Christmas, it was already my plan to do so). I can't imagine how this storm would have been. When the trees are that thickly covered in ice, the branches or sometimes entire trees start to fall due to the weight, it is very dangerous.
I smashed my arm falling on ice in that one. It was so badly broken, it was bent, and I had to wait hours for an ambulance because I live alone. Snow is beautiful, but the beauty of ice is treacherous.
Yeah, it wasn't as bad as 1998, but it was still pretty bad. We had the luck of it being one and done - Quebec it just kept raining for days.
My parents and my sister both had no power- my dad was running the refrigerator with a generator so they wouldn't lose all the food. My sister brought over what she had in her fridge so she wouldn't lose what she had, too. We had all done the pre-Christmas food shop. Meanwhile, my apartment was just fine. I didn't even realize how bad the destruction was until I went outside. I hadn't turned on the TV, either.
I love neighbourhoods with mature trees, but those trees always suffer so much when this stuff happens.
I remember this one. We were supposed to go to my mom's house in Toronto for Christmas... but the power was out and would stay out for several more days. Driving up her street was surreal. Trees down everywhere so we had to zigzag our way through the street. Ended up spending Christmas in a hotel room and having Christmas dinner at McDonald's since they were the only ones open... they ended up giving us free apple pie :)
Back at home, me and several neighbors all had trees down in our front yards, but our power was only out for about 12 hours so we got off pretty easy.
I remember this because my family was supposed to come over to my house for Christmas. We were at my husband's family gathering when my mom got a hold of someone to say everyone has to come sleep over since we still had power. Then a few days later my sister wanted to take our kids to see Frozen in the movie theater which just felt so surreal at the time. Bushes were still coated in ice.
I was so lucky in that Toronto ice storm that I was only without power for 24 hours. Some of my friends were out for a week and had to leave their homes. I collect lanterns and have lots of kerosene so light and some heat weren't too bad. It was a wakeup call though and I'm much better prepared for something like that now.
I felt lucky that I had moved from Ottawa to Vancouver a little over a year before this happened so I felt like I missed it. However my family had to go through it and they were without power for 9 days south of Ottawa. My parents had a wood stove (which they never had to use before) but it wasn't until the last day that they figured out that it actually had a slide out cover that turned it into a cook top stove! My Dad kicked himself for not figuring it out sooner! The lesson is always try out your emergency plan BEFORE an emergency!
I lived in Montreal for about 10 months in 1986. Way too much snow. It would dump and then melt and then repeat. Lived in Edmonton mostly up until 1984. Winters are long in Edmonton but they don't get so much snow at once like Montreal. Lived more than half my life in the greater Vancouver area now. I really prefer the climate here (temperate rainforest). Love the big trees.
There was that day last month when a bit of snow trapped me in Richmond and I could not get home in Surrey for 12 hours. Nothing like the ice storm back east.
I was 12 living in southern Ontario when this happened, it was so scary watching everything on the news and I wasn't even in the heart of it, I can't imagine how terrifying it would have been (with no hydro, many weren't even aware what was to come or how long the storm was to last, or even if their loved ones were safe) so heart breaking
I was a teen when that happened in Ottawa. There were small patches of forests scattered in my neighbourhood. The storm had fused the trees and their branches together and my friends and I were able to jump from one top of a tree to another, 30 feet off the ground. It was like we were on clouds. If only smart phones were a thing then...
I lived on a 1 acxre lot in rural area south of Ottawa when this happened. It was a slow start, looked like just another annoying ice storm. Wasn't that cold out, but after days of rain the temperature plummeted to -22C and the wind picked up. That's when most the damage occurred. 11 trees on my lot fell, amazingly only damaging a small fenced in area at the back of my house. I lived on a long rural road where not one of over a hundred poles that fed the area with power was left standing. They were all down, snapped off a few feet from the ground. They all had to be replaced. It took over 6 weeks to complete because we were rural and low population, it just wasn't a priority. Finally a crew from Detroit arrived to help out. I was one of the lucky ones as I had a fireplace and plenty of wood. Many others didn't. The army setup a camp right next to my place and I had to go through their checkpopint everytime I came and went. What a nice group of folks, helping the locals out with cleanup and general aid. I was one of the few with a four wheel drive so I helped check on others in remote spots in the area. Then came the melt, and without power, basements were flooding. Plenty of damage done there since there was no power to pump the water out. It was quite a period. And its funny, but since then, I've never been without a generator. Its come in handy several times since. I did get many gorgeous pictures of things encased in ice. To this day I still worry every time it freezes rain out.
Remember this storm well. Thankfully we were not affected too much by power outages as we lived in an area that had primarily under ground wiring. I do remember the crackle of the trees as they tried to shed the unwanted ice from their branches. I remember going out to the end of our street to watch the military go by on the highway. To this day you can still see trees along the highway that are bowed from the weight of ice that was on their branches.
I remember driving at night, power out everywhere so no light except our headlights, and the trees covered in thick ice coming down over us because of the weight. I've never experienced such a unique "end of the world yet strangely beautiful" thing since.
Weird watching this as we currently are under a freezing rain storm warning... My aunt and uncle lost power for a month because of that storm. These were tough times. Since then, I always carry cleats in my purse during winter, just in case.
I also lived through this storm. I was finishing my degree at McGill and living in downtown Montreal. I lived across the street from Hotel-Dieu Hospital and my memory is that when they power went out, they turned some generators on, but much of it was in the dark. I was relatively lucky that my power was off for only about 4 days. I lasted two nights in my apartment, sleeping in my coat and under multiple blankets before it got too cold for me. I had friends who lived a few blocks away whose power was restored sooner, so I was fortunate to be able to stay with them for a couple of days. The trees cracking in this video really brought back strong sensory memories for me. I grew up in Saskatchewan and am used to very cold, stormy winter weather (yep, frequent - 40 weather), but this was the craziest winter weather event I have ever seen.
I've live through the worst of that storm... Yeah I'm a Québécois! Was 3 whole weeks with no electricity ... Was still young enough to enjoy the beauty of it, but the nights were so scary with the sounds of those trees falling all over... You're right, we didn't have cells back then, but even if we did, all the towers would of been so full of ice, they would of broken right off too! so no internet or cell would of worked, same as with the electricity. ps. been binge watching your videos tonight, Love them... got yourself a new sub! Thanks!
This was absolutely devastating. Check out the Tornado in Woodstock 1979. This was I do believe one of the biggest tornado distaster in recorded Canadian history as well and it happened just a few miles from where I lived as a kid.
I had a friend that lived in Woodstock and he invited my boyfriend and I to come for a couple of days to see all the damage.
@@hummingbird2254 it was pretty bad. A relative of ours was coming home from the hospital with his young family when it hit. They got to the house but couldn't make it in. This dying man shielded his wife and two young children against the cement steps going up to the door and held on for dear life. It destroyed their house and the rest of the farm but they somehow by the grace of God survived.