It is pretty rare to have a blackout in Toronto, Canada, rare enough to catch people off guard. Without warning at 6:30pm we lost power for 5 hours. As we have lived in China before, we had automatically shifted our state of readiness so that in such unlikely events we are always ready. This time we really did need it.
Blackouts here in Toronto are indeed pretty rare. We have the occasional brownout, where the lights flicker and maybe the computers need a reboot, but the last full on blackout happened around 10 years ago in 2003, when some software glitch in a power plant in Ohio took down the US eastern seaboard and much of Ontario and Quebec.
Little Weed has been wanting a blackout for some time. Not that he has any special powers to have his wish granted, but he seems to think they are unique and therefore fun. Odd, I admit. With the real thing at hand he was overjoyed.
No tv, no internet, no lights? We lit three candles and glued them to a saucer, providing light for the living room. Another three illuminated the kitchen, while a single lit the bathroom. The faint smell of smoke permeated the air of our house. One scented candle, we don’t know which one, particularly stood out. This we do not smell every day.
Thankfully the event occurred after dinner and we were full. Cooking without power, while we are prepared, is not as novel on a single burner backpacker camping stove. We did this in 2003. The kids played chess by candle light. We could not read, as the light was too dim.
I tried to busy myself, but realized the futility of the effort. Instead I sat back and reflected on the positives that I have in life and the possibilities of improvement in happiness that could occur in the future. It sometimes takes an abrupt event to force change on people, myself included. Things are not as bad as it sometimes seems, and this is a good thing.
We found one of our only battery powered radios and was able to get one top 40 hits station. They commented that tweets to them were significantly down! No kidding, since most people lacked power their PC or at least their routers were down. As they played hit after hit there was scant mention of a blackout in Toronto. I guessed the station felt it was not so important, though listening to hits on a 2″ speaker brought this home to us with every note. We normally have much better sound fidelity. My ipod was out of power, as I forgot to recharge it, and I cannot recall the last time I used it. Some things you think are important are really not.
We kept thinking and hoping that the power would come on in the next 5 minutes, but this dragged on for 5 hours until at 11:30 the power magically came back on. After a while we stopped hoping and got on with amusing ourselves. We adapted, and quickly. It really was not that bad and was not such a huge inconvenience. For the change in routine and the shock that we do not have power, this was worthwhile.
A blackout once a year might actually be beneficial for our society after all, allowing us a gentle reminder to be in a steady state of readiness. It is really not that hard here in Toronto. You need some candles, a lighter or matches, flashlights and batteries and a radio. Is this too much to ask of the people of Toronto? A blackout once every ten years lulls us all into complacency of sorts, and makes the event surprising, even though it should not be. This is human nature. Those that prepare are chastised for over-reacting to an event that will never come, until it does. Those that are unprepared vow to do better next time but usually never do. This is human nature.
Overall we not only enjoyed our power outage but actually learned from it. Who knew that a lack of power, for a short 5 hours, would be so educational. With the exception of one of our platie fish who died during the outage, we are none the worse for wear.
