Ernestly ?!Ernestly ?!By ERNIE NEUFELD, Weyburn Review Associate Publisher
Thirty-two years ago, perhaps a week or two later in the year, I drove to Manitoba on business matters having to do with the Review's Canada Centennial special issue then in the planning stage. I left home at about 4 o'clock on a cold, snowy, windy day. The sun was shining brightly, and although the light snowfall was drifting across the highway to about the height of the car, I had no difficulty seeing either the lines on the road or oncoming traffic - what little there was of it. I did not for a minute doubt that I would get to the day's destination - Altona, Manitoba - at a reasonable time in the evening.
About an hour later, the sun was setting as I passed Arcola. Suddenly it was dark, and I could see nothing. I dared not stop, lest I be struck from behind, but slowed down to the lowest possible speed. I crawled along, catching only the occasional glimpse of blacktop during momentary lulls. I was as frightened as I recall ever being in my life.
At one point I thought I heard the crunch of gravel under my wheels. I opened my side window and could not even see the road beneath me. I stepped out of the car, felt gravel underfoot, and realized with alarm that the gravel was the highway shoulder - on the wrong side of the road. With my heart in my throat, silent (I think) prayers on my lips, and my door open so that I might peer at the ground, I manouevred the car back into the eastbound lane and proceeded again at a snail's pace. I covered the 16-odd kilometers from Arcola to Carlyle in about one hour.
Reaching Carlyle intact I decided not to push my luck, but to stay there for the night, even though the storm seemed less intense, and I was still a long, long way from my planned stop. By this time I needed nourishment, and entered the restaurant of the hotel where I planned to spend the night.
Just seated, I noticed a group of Mounties entering the restaurant and decided to seek their advice. They had just arrived from the east, I learned, and when I asked them about driving conditions they seemed puzzled. They had experienced no difficulty and obviously were wondering just what my problem might be. With this encouragement I continued on after a quick meal. I was able to drive at normal speeds, and stopped for the night not far short of Altona, my first business stop.
Now ask me about my worst experiences in Saskatchewan blizzards, and I will surely tell you - in even greater detail if time permits - of the 1967 night just described. After I returned, no one in Weyburn remembered the storm as having been particularly bad, but to me it will always be one of my most terrifying winter driving nightmares. About the only comparable one was another trip to Manitoba during Christmas week 20 years ago, when we proceeded, in broad daylight, and against all advice, from Souris eastward in intense blizzard conditions. After a few miles we turned around - a hazardous operation in itself - and after eons arrived back in Souris where we were able to book the last motel room available. Perhaps that is one of the reasons it remains etched in my memory. Try some day being storm-stayed in Souris, when it is so cold it is a challenge to walk one block, and the television offers only a single channel. Ask the Norman Martins of R.M. of Wellington memory. I think they got the second-last room.
So the assessment of storms, while there are surely official criteria, is largely situational. I have heard of Weyburn folks spending entire miserable winter nights at a Corinne service station, because they simply could not continue driving. Safe and snug at home in Weyburn, hadn't even known there was a storm in progress.
Thus when Greg Nikkel of the Review newsroom E-mailed me last month for my rating of the great 1999 Toronto snowstorm - hailed variously as the worst in years, decades or the century - I tried to rise above my own minor inconveniences. And by the length of the storm, the amount of snowfall, temperatures and wind forces, I ranked it among the worst I had experienced in my life.
Since then, Toronto papers have been rife with letters from irate citizens decrying the lack of preparedness, a few from folks defending Mayor Mel Lastman and his efforts, and others from fellow Canadians in other cities, mostly to brand the city's citizenry as wimps.
Maclean's Magazine had its own assortment of mail from across the nation, with varying degrees of sympathy or snickering.
I liked best this offering: "Let's see ... subnormal temperatures, record-breaking snowfalls, public transportation comes to a halt, businesses unable to open. In Winnipeg we call this a holiday."
I have no trouble admitting that beside the cancellation of a few social events I had been looking forward to, a bit of walking indoors instead of in the great carbon-monoxide-enriched outdoors, and not daring to drive beyond the nearest supermarket, my biggest problem with the storm was the length of it. But recalling a much earlier Toronto life, I thought of protracted waits for street cars at frigid, unsheltered stops, and being passed by car after car loaded to the gunwales, so to speak. While today's conditions are different, the January storm brought comparable and well-documented challenges.
But when folks compare the recent storm - as a few do - to Montreal's ice storm last winter, when people did without power and heat for weeks while an ice-encased world came crashing down around them, I believe there is no comparison.
My address (also listed on the Review's Website) is ernestly@pathcom.com.
Box 400, 904 East Avenue
Weyburn, SK
S4H 2K4
Phone: (306) 842-7487
Fax: (306) 842-0282
E-mail: production@weyburnreview.com
This web page and its contents are copyright of the Weyburn
Review (1987) Ltd.
