Did you experience this storm? Share your story below!

I am a High Voltage Lineman and I was there in Montreal and worked the IceStorm of 98 we worked 20 hours a day in the coldest and Brutal weather I’ve been through I’m retired now and every time it gets cold I Dream about it Nightmares but I’m proud that’s I was young and strong and could help put the lights back on 🇺🇸🇨🇦

I met my husband on Jan 5 1998 during the ice storm. We had no power for 32 days. We live 1 hr west of Montreal. It was a rough 32 days without power in our rural area, but I wouldn’t change it for anything as I met the man of my dreams and we will celebrate our 25 anniversary in about 2 weeks.

I immigrated to canada in 97, this was my first winter.... imagine that. I thought I made the worst decision of my life

I was living in a little log cabin in western Quebec when the 1998 ice storm hit. Many people in my neighborhood had to evacuate because there was an extended period without any power and people couldn't heat their houses or draw water from wells (electric pumps). Some of my neighbors even died. I had a wood stove and plenty of firewood so I was OK for heat. I couldn't use my well but I had about a dozen 2L pop bottles that I had filled with water for emergency purposes. Between melting snow and rationing my water I stayed put and I was relatively comfortable. I also had plenty of food on hand so I didn't have to go anywhere. Driving was impossible anyway. There were trees and power lines down all over the place. The day after the worst of the storm the sun came out and I went for a walk with snowshoes in my local hardwood forest. It was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen, a huge crystalline forest (i.e. bare branches completely covered with ice) with the sun gleaming through it all and refracting in a thousand directions. I learned at least two things. Great beauty can accompany great danger. And it's always a good idea to keep extra food and water on hand no matter where you live.

We lived in the “triangle of darkness” on the South shore of Montreal. It took more than a month to get power back. They set up showers in the neighborhood car wash because they had gas powered heaters. Most of us heated water electrically so had no hot water. We lost trees but salvaged all the dense ice and made a makeshift freezer with it and snow walls. We put everything we had in the freezer in boxes lined with newspapers and buried it all in ice and snow. We lost nothing. The worst part was when Montreal got power and people expected us to work normally without power. I was working on papers by candlelight and people wanted to fax me stuff to work on. However, we saw northern lights and more stars than we had seen since we were kids during that time.

I lived in downtown Montreal and was 8 months pregnant when the storm hit. Our power was out for 3 weeks. We stayed in our home the first week, but when our water went out, we had to go to a shelter. The only shelter that had room for us was up on Mount Royal. But we couldn't get up the mountain because all the busses and cars were just sliding backward down the hill. My husband had to carry me up the mountain by trying to walk through any snow patches we could find that would give some friction.

I was a trucker coming back from a run to Florida and headed back home to a suburb of Montreal. They had just reopened interstate 87 north of Albany, NY, and I managed to make it to the border with few problems. As I got closer to Montreal driving along Hwy 15, it was apparent something was different, and wrong. There were no lights glowing from the island, and the only lights I did see were the orange flashing beacons from all of the emergency and hydro vehicles. As I started coming into the south shore, I started to witness much of what has been shown in the video, and my immediate thoughts were that it looked like had had crossed over into a war zone. It is now 2022, but the ice storm of 1998 will never be forgotten.

Can we stop for a second and appreciate the incredible ingenuity of the individual who suggested dropping logs from a military helicopter to de-ice the line? I wonder how that conversation went. "How about we fly in real close and smash it with hammers?" "Nah, too risky. What about all these logs laying around?"

I was 16 at the time. We were lucky enough to have been on the same electrical circuit than the hospital. So the longest time we were without power was about 2-4 hours. I remember my house being full of family members, and how we were able to turn a bad situation into something fun. School was supposed to start on my 17th birthday after the holidays, but the school had turned into a shelter. We didn’t go back to school for weeks. It was an interesting experience. Something you remember until your last day. Edit: jeez I got really emotional watching this and reliving it through my adult eyes…

Nothing more Canadian than dropping logs onto ice-covered powerlines.

I was 8 1/2 months pregnant in January 1998 in Saint-Bruno de Montarville, south shore of Montréal. It was, literally, the worst experience of my life. 3 weeks with no power, no visits to the doctor, all food in the freezer gone bad, all house plants dead. We lived in a 4 1/2 basement apartment with another couple, my 17 month old, a cat and a dog for 3 weeks. To this day, when I hear tick, tick, tick on the windows I cringe.😢

I was 15 years old back then. Got a week off school, used my flash light, lighted all the candles we could find and it was scary. Never forget 98 storm.

I'm watching this tonight, as the weather is going bad, and freezing rain is coming and I'm realizing how badly prepared we are. Aren't we fast to forget the minimal amount of things that can make a huge difference between getting thru the storm or losing the battle and landing in a shelter. Words to the wise, I will get my kit together asap.

Just hearing the sounds in this made me relive a lot of it again. We lived in the Black Triangle, in a town that follows the power line pylons. It's a weird feeling being in a house without electricity because of the lack of sounds. No lights buzzing and the likes. But the reality was that every couple seconds at every time in the day or the night, you'd hear centennial trees cracking, falling and smashing like glasses of marbles on the concrete of roads or the rook of cars and houses. Like clockwork you'd hear either the police, the fire dept or the ambulances try and make their way to places. I was a kid back then and strangely enough have really good memories of me and my brothers living through this. But We all volunteered at the shelter out of boredom but ended up meeting a lot of people there, it teach me a lot. Huge thank you to neighbourhood heroes, volunteers, army personnel, folks at Hydro-Q and Samaritans from down south during our hour of need!

I was there with my Air Cadets training program when this happened we stayed behind to help. I was 18 at the time, it still holds as the craziest storm in my life.

35:40 This man has warmed my heart. Coming up from Richmond, Virginia to help us during our most troubled times is truly an act of utmost humanity. Thank you, kind sir.

As a Canadian Forces medic, the battalion I was serving with in Valcartier ( 5e bataillon des services du Canada), as well a good portion the base’s other units were scrambled to load up vehicles with supplies and form a convoy and headed out to the triangle of darkness. Being the before last vehicle to leave we traveled on hwy 40 leaving Québec close to midnight and only arrived in Montreal in the early hours of the morning. (We had been slowed down by and accident involving one of our vehicles and a tractor trailer on the icy hwy) arriving near Montreal was rather surreal as it looked like a war zone. Flashes of light could be seen in the distance looking like bombs going off everywhere, most likely power lines falling and causing sparks. Broken trees and power lines littered the roads and fields. The amount of ice on every structure was truly unbelievable. We eventually set up at base St-Hubert where our medical personnel were set up to take care of our unit’s sick and wounded for about 22 days or so. To my disappointment I was never actually involved in directly assisting the civilian population but most other members of our unit were busy supporting all the other units who in turn were helping the local population and authorities. It was an experience I will never forget but still, I would have felt much more useful directly helping my fellow citizens.

I was but a child when this happened. I remember weeks without power, using outside as a fridge freezer, and putting on hockey skates or figure skates was the only way to leave your house. We were lucky to not be in the city so we were prepared for such an outage but the images will still stay in my head forever.

For anyone interested in learning even more, look up Canadian National 3502- a diesel-electric locomotive used to power a town during this ice storm.

I was active military in Manitoba in 98. We got the call for assistance and upon leaving Manitoba where the temperature was -54C, we landed in Quebec and the warm temperatures had us baffled at first. Then we saw the ice. I'll never forget.

A tribute to the resiliency of people in the face of major challenges.

This documentary brought up a lot of emotion. I was a student at McGill University. We were at school the morning the storm started. Over the PA they announced that the building would be closing in an hour so we evacuated. In ‘98, I lived on Rue St-Urbain on the corner of Avenue Mont Royal. I was one of the few who only lost power for only an hour. I credit my fortune to being on the same grid as l’Hotel Dieu hospital. That weekend, I was supposed to travel to DC for a Monday interview. Instead of leaving on Saturday, I finally got out on Sunday. I lived near Mount Royal and was very sad to see the devastation on the mountain. I remember thinking of the folks who lived on the South Shore that had no electricity for weeks. Hats off to thousands of HQ lines people as well as the crews who came to help from the US. I had no idea that crews came from as far away as Virginia. Any Montrealers here lived through the flood in ‘87?

This is a very well-done documentary especially by the standards of late-90s/early-00s television. I'm particularly struck by the fact that the Hydro Quebec press conference was interrupted by a power outage.

Very well done. Was 19 years old and 25 km south of downtown Ottawa. What a flood of emotions. I do believe that this is the best documentation of this event that I have seen.

I was 22 years old and I was living downtown Montreal. It felt like the end of the world, a war zone with all the military. Worst day by day. I'm watching this video and I'm shaking and crying. I started to cry within the first 3 min. It's really disturbing to see. It's like reliving it, even 24 years later! We've been told it was possible we had to leave the city, by foot... but to go where? I remember on the south shore they called the CN rails & CP rails to get a locomotive in the town. @17:50 Locomotive works with Diesel power generator onboard. They provided electricity to shelters and utilities like water and sewage. As they say at the end... it was the Perfect Ice Storm.

I was lucky because I lived in the Plateau where most of the power lines are underground. We lost power for only a few days. My parents were less lucky, they live on the South Shore and were out of power for a month. I went there on the weekend to chop firewood, but the wood was green and covered in ice. My father and I would try to remove as much ice as possible before chopping the logs. Then we would lay the chopped wood on the floor in the basement to try to dry them out. Then finally we would stack the relatively dry pieces of wood around the fireplace to dry them out further, before finally burning them. After about 10 days my parents finally abandoned their home and stayed at my sister's apartment in Montreal, where she had power. My sister had been in Toronto over the Christmas holidays, and couldn't return to Montreal because the roads were iced up. She had to watch the disaster unfold on television, knowing all her family was trapped here. What was so weird, is that after about a week life was back to normal in the Plateau, but you could take a short metro ride to the South Shore, and Saint-Lambert, where I grew up, looked like a war zone. I'll never forget the incongruity it, it was hard to believe we were in the same city (metropolitan area).

I'm from Chateauguay Quebec and I'll never forget this! It was pure hell .The hospital emergencies were loaded with patients for fractures and broken bones from slipping on ice and falling.

From southern Ontario we watched helplessly and in awe. It was heartbreaking as news poured out of Montreal, especially folks who passed in their homes from the cold. A terrible time for our fellow Canadians but also a time where anyone who could assist, large or small, did.

What people need to realize here, is that Hydro Quebec has one (if not the strongest) linemen force in North America. They have always built very strong. My dad was a lineman chief back then, he helped build it up to that standard. When there were hurricanes and storms in the US, he would go there to help. He always reported how their equipment was sub-par and infrastructures compared to Quebec's like in Boston for example. This would have been even more disastrous if our grid had not been built strong in the first place. Many lessons learned though and they rebuilt even stronger now. They learned to turn up the voltage to melt the ice for example as a prevention.

We lived on Jeanne-Mance between Villeneuve and Mount-Royal but had power through the whole time. We had many friends stay and sleep over during it and we hung out at the "Skala" on Parc Avenue. People came together; everyone helped everyone else....it was amazing to see and be a part of. I worked on the clean-up crew for the south shore as well. What an experience!

You're such a talented editor! Thanks for these compilation videos. Really well done. My sister lived in Montreal during this in a factory loft with her boyfriend. They were lucky in that they had a wood stove. They shared their home food with neighbours who weren't so lucky. She still talks about the experience of how bizarre it was and also how it also brought out the best in people :)

Almost 25 years after, the images are still present in our memories. I just turned 8 years old when it happened. It was surreal and I hope we will never live something like this again

I lived in Quebec that year and went to visit my dad in Ontario; who was in his 70's and got stuck there for 23 days without electricity. We were 4 families living together in a farm area and lived on melted snow and water from a pool with one toilet for the gang of 15. Shopping in the food stores was like living in an apocalypse ; with little or no food on the shelves. The Military was called into town and helped by going house to house to check in on residents of the area. I will never forget it.

Montreal did survive this storm. It is a beautiful city that everyone should visit.

I was living in Greenfield Park (South Shore) and working at McGill Univ. Even the Yellow metro line shut down. It was a real nightmare. There must have been 2-3cm of ice covering the roads. The transformers behind my apt building shorted and arced. So creepy. The police came to pick us up to take us to the shelter at the nearest high school. The Canadian Army set up an Army kitchen to feed us, and even their huge generator outside the school caught fire.

Even though I come from a cold country, I have no idea how hard it must be to have no power for 3+ weeks (judging by some comments) in the middle of -20 C winter. But it warms my heart to some degree that people came together and helped each other and even Muricans came to help. Absolutely amazing. Also, absolutely terrifying how fragile modern infrastructure is.

Hydro-Quebec learned a lot from this storm and developed a lot of solution. If we get a storm like this again, the impact would be a lot lower, especially for the high voltage power line.

I was 13 when this happened. My family and I used to drive to Florida almost every winter. We didn’t really know how bad the weather was until we drove back to our house in Quebec City. Although I didn’t experience the disaster myself, I remember how shocked I was looking at the scenary when we approached the Canadian border. I’ll never forget the sight of the powerlines crumpled like discarded paper cups. Scary.

I was six but remember it so vividly. Our family was the only ones with 2 working fireplaces, our entire large family came over. Around 30 of us all huddled in working together without power for most of it, generator for small things when we needed it. But no one had cells back then so it was board games and mini stick hockey in the basement haha i as a kid loved it, extra long Christmas break and I got to hang out with all my cousins :)

I lived threw the ice storm of 1998 Maine. I lost my Roof to my home. We had no power for months. It was the most horrible event of my life. It is so hard to explain when you almost don't make it. Hypothermia is beyond what you can understand.

We were a few weeks without power at my place. We were rural, I remember military vehicles with chains coming in to ask if we needed help, since no other vehicles could make it. We were skating in the orchard, heated up and cooked on the wooden stove at my grandparents, and used the generator to keep the water pump going. Eastern Ontario. We can still to this day see damage in the forest, 25 years later! The orchard was a write off, almost 50% of the trees didn't make it

I just ran across this and it brought back memories of 1996 in Cullman Alabama. We had an ice storm. My husband stayed out of town so he could get to work. I was alone with a 17 year old, a nine year old and a three year old. The younger children were very sick with high fever. I had had them at the dr the day before but they were still very sick. My daughter and I listened to trees fall all night. The big booms they made as they hit the ground was very frightening. We had no power for 4 or 5 days. We had propane heat but we only had about 15 lbs pressure. That should be 15 percent in our tank. The temperature didn’t get above freezing the hold time. Lows were below zero. I was used to camping so I made out with simple soups cooked on the grill. I can’t really say I was really scared but with the children so sick I was really worried.

Eastern Ontario also was hit hard during this storm. It happened during the week of my 20 th Birthday. The power went out on my birthday, Jan 8. I'll never forget the days of hearing branches, trees and other things crashing down and my candle lit birthday dinner with the half of mc cain chocolate cake my aunt had left over in her fridge. Then there was a thunderstorm that ripped through in the middle of all of this icy nightmare. It was craziness! It was too unsafe to go out for a few days and the amazing feeling it was to see light for the first time. First, it was the interior light in the car when we had to go to the only generator powered grocery store in our area while we were getting the snow storm that followed the ice storm. We had no choice but to go out because we were out of everything. We could see the lit up store sign in the distance with everything dark. It was breath taking. The store didn't have much left but enough to get us by for a few days if we used it wisely. Our entire area was out of power for miles around. Some were weeks and over a month in the dark. I think we went 5-6 days before we started seeing the hydro and military start rolling in. That was an incredible sight! They were definitely our heroes at that time. They were who brought back our normal in a world surrounded by disaster. We, like many others also lost everything in our fridge and freezers. It took our house furnace 6 hours of running non stop to get the house up to a comfortable temperature and that whole time I watched out the window as the hydro and military trucks bringing more in to go help people in the rural areas who needed it the most. Here is a footage documentary from my area during this storm. We are located south of Ottawa. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/nteTZ9GGz67cink.html&ab_channel=BargainBinCinema We redid my birthday with 2 celebrations a couple weeks later. My kids used to panic when the power went out in a storm and I am quick to remind them of this ice storm. Their generation can't imagine what that was like and I hope they never experience a storm like this.

Back then, what helped is that we all had land lines. No cells. So even without power for weeks, we could still call one another to check in. We didn't get to see any of these news. We lived them. We'd sit in the car amd listen to the radio or a battery operated radio in the house. We were in the death triangle and we'd drive supplies over to where my father lived in another town for him and the people he was sheltering at the time and the road there was terrifying and dangerous and just.... insane. The destruction was absolutely breath-taking. You couldn't go the way you normally went places because the transformers were exploding and the trees lied in the road.... I hope I never see anything like it again... but it was beautiful. You also got to know people's and companies' true colors really quickly. The good, the bad and the ugly.

It was like a apocalyptic scenario. But the best and heartwarming things of this, is people helping each others, from all parts of Canada and the US, as if we were just One. If only we could just act like this all the times, everyday.

I'm from Kingston but was living in Toronto when this happened. Seeing the images of power towers crumpling like they were made of straw while watching the storm move in our direction was scary. We got very lucky as the worst of it ended around Kingston (3 hours east of Toronto). When I went home a couple of months later I just cried seeing the destruction of so many trees. My family's home is in a rural area a few minutes outside the city, and the landscape looked so different. It definitely had an impact on wildlife. People literally freezing to death in their homes was also a serious lesson in how dangerous these storms can become.

I have a similar story. My parents met just before the storm and couldn't talk to eachother as they were cities appart and the storm stopped them from speaking to eachother. The met again 2 months later and then 2 years later here I was! truly happy that they met again, or I wouldn't be here

Well done documentary that covers the event. Yes I lived through it. I was living in Montreal and working downtown Montreal at the time. I was aware of the increasing power failures starting on Wednesday outside Montreal. The big hit was on the black Friday (Jan. 9) when power went down in the afternoon. I left office early and I walked home in slush, snow and ice. It was black everywhere except for the car lights and the army was very present and reassuring for me. My boots and feet were soaking wet up to my ankles. I called my brother when I got home to make sure he and his family were fine. He came to get me because he had propane heating in his house and we knew by then that the damages were extensive and situation would last a long time. We manage to cross the Mercier bridge just before it was closed (like all the bridges) to remove the ice. The next morning, it was freezing temperature about -15C. Ice was everywhere. I remember that Saturday the propane delivery man showing up. I was so surprised that he had managed to drive all the way to the house without trees blocking the road. I did not have to go to emergency center I was privileged.

Ten years after this storm, in 2008, northern New England was hit by a bad ice storm, but nothing like this. I lived in southern New Hampshire at the time, and we had no power for three days. For some of our neighbors and family, it was two weeks. To this day, ice storms are just the worst possible weather. I’m so glad to live closer to Boston now, where it’s usually not so cold.

Hi Al!. You are a hell of a good lineman and I'm honored have been taught by you. That 98 storm looked like the mother of all ice storms and we have been on more then our fair share of them together, haven't we? Ice storms and other wise. I've talked with a bunch of guys that went up there with you and they all say that was the toughest storm anyone had ever worked. The working conditions where brutal and the word I got was that the soldiers on the base where you all lived, treated the American linecrews pretty poorly. You all persevered and got it done anyway you could. Well done Ashem. It was an honor to have worked with you Al and I continue to be inspired by the example you set. I hope you see you again soon my friend.

i'm a survivor of this ice storm,i was 16 years old and was living in St-Cyrille De Wendover (near Drummondville) wich was among the most affected area..... A 4 weeks long power outage. We had the chance to have a wood stove so heating was not a problem but we had no generator to power the water pump of the artesian well, so no water.... poop in a bucket and other great experiences lol

My family lived through it! The fire dept had to clear the trees to help us get to safety! My mom received a plaque that said she experienced the 1998 Ice Storm. Power was out, Water was frozen! We had to go down to the lake and get buckets of water to bathe in! Thankfully our home had a old school wood fireplace which we placed the pots of water on to boil.. It was extremely cold and very scary as a child!! After that storm, I refuse to complain about the winters now, People literally died! my family could have been apart of that, But luckily my mother is a fighter and always found a way to make even the most unbearable situations better. There were 7 kids, and 2 adults ( my mom and her friend, who is also female ) That storm taught me the strength of women!!!

I just did a report on this for my emergency management course, eye opening, I remember being able to skate with my brother all the way to the grocery store

I will always remember the first morning of the disaster. It was 6h30 in the morning and was walking on Beaubien towards the metro station. Crossing St-Hubert I saw half a tree falling on a car. Then same thing happened on Chateaubriand. At work, half the people did not come to work and I had to do the first of weeks of double shifts. When I came back home, all the streets were filled with fallen trees. One even fell right on my feet. Only then did I fully understood how hard the next weeks were going to be.

I lived in the east of Montreal and was about 16. I was lucky to have natural gas heater so a couple of friends slept at my place, the city was indeed literally silent dead. We could put our skates at home and skate to a friends place, everybody brought some food we played guitars, life was great for us, we were sad when we saw lights getting back, we knew schools would reopens soon! Amazing experience of a lifetime indeed.

I was driving home to Lachine from a party in Hudson (about a 35 minute drive) the night it started, and had to pull over 5 times to scrape the windshield even though I had the heat on full blast. I remember thinking to myself "well that's kinda strange".

I was living in Ottawa when this happened. It was the most wild thing I have ever been in weather wise. We lived out in an area that lost power for almost 30 days, and went to stay at my aunts house.

What a great program. Very well put together. Bravo!

Much respect to you Montréaleurs et Québecois en générale, for persevering through this awful, awful disaster. I've lived in the Midwest US all my life and even with our absolute worst blizzards, what you endured surpassed our storms, in my view. Ice storms are the absolute worst winter events. Even at nearly age 60, I can drive in heavy snow, but after one time driving on icy roads in 2000, and being flung into an expressway ditch during the drive, I will never, ever, EVER drive on ice again, even at the risk of losing a job.

Lived in Vermont at the time. Not close to the trees thankfully, but we lived in the country near a big forest. The sound of ice breaking branches, echoing through the valley...I'll never forget it.

I live 1 hour west of Montreal and was without power for 1 whole month! I live in the country so my road was one of the last ones to get hydro back. I heat with wood and had a generator so life went on as usual inside the house, but as soon as I went outside it was a different story. driving down the gravel road with trees hanging over the road from both sides and the cracking soud the trees made was not cool at all!

I first watched this on a reaction video, came here to watch it, and subscribed. This is such a well-done video! I’m looking forward to watching the rest of your content.

I lived in St-Micheal at the time. The apartment went from 21 degrees to 10 degrees within an hour of loosing power on Tuesday morning. Though it was beautiful it was also scary.

Fantastic doc. Cant wait to see more videos from this channel.

I’ll never forget this disaster…I’m in Toronto, but my dear friend lost his car, house (both crushed by trees), and almost his life after being hit by a bus while walking to work, that lost control on the ice, jumped the curb, and pinned him against a wall. He and his family was devastated, I just thank god he survived after 2 months in the hospital. It was an awakening reminder material things mean nothing, because you can replace a house and a car, which he did, but you cannot replace a life. Ps - a HUGE THANK YOU to all those that came to help!!!!

At the time I lived in Low Qc, 45 minutes north of Ottawa. My girlfriend and daughter lived in ottawa as she was going to college. I was able to be with them but we couldn't leave and go back to my house across the border as power was slowly going out around us. Ottawa started putting road block up using armed forces, we then left Ottawa to go to my parent's house deep in Renfrew county. What was usually a 2 hour drive took 4 hours with all the ice. We had wood heat there, generator and we were comfortable. We went back home 2 weeks later. Weird times indeed. I remember that almost no one had generators back then, but aftet that many ppl did. There was damages left over in places for over a year. Snow is one thing, the ice of '98 was a whole new thing. What a time

I was watching some American fella reacting to your video.. I felt obliged to come and see the original. Thanks btw history is important.

On Wednesday in Montreal 05.04.2023 we've got again ice storm,not as big that was in 1998,but still many people without power!!!...☹

This video was ones of the best I've seen.absolutely very well done,

I didn't realize how extensive it was. I was in grade 11 at the time and saw it in the news, but it didn't really sink in until just now the extent of the damage and danger.

I was 12 when it happened. I remember clearly coming back from my friend's house the Sunday afternoon when it all started. I was playing to walk over the snow coated with ice without breaking it. We lost power over the next days. Since my parents were into camping we had warm winter sleeping bags and camping stove and fuel. Luckily, we were in Laval, outside the worst areas. We had power back within days but only for short periods and in alternance. My best friend was living in the other sector. So, our families were moving from house to house depending which one had electricity. I remember having a good with with my family and my friend.

I remember this, I was young Cpl in the CAF and flew in from Winnipeg. I remember the ice falling and hitting my Sgt when he was warning us of the ice falling. It was also so dark.

Lived in ON when this happened and I'll never forget it. Everything was encased in ice. The porch, the roof, the bushes, the trees, the vehicles. It was bananas. We were so fortunate to have a stocked wood-burning fireplace. We all lived in the living room for about a week and had to bail the sump pump out by hand. I remember the Army coming to our door to check on us. Totally nuts.

I was among the Montreal area people who experienced this event and I remember as it was yesterday. I was 21 at the time and the first day it started I had to go to an adult school and, because of the weather conditions, I did not have any transportation. I had to walk. Instead of 45 minutes, it took me 1 and half hour. When I finally arrived, the school was closed so I had to go back home. We would have never imagined that this would become worse. We lost power about 10 days but we stayed at my grandparents' house in Brossard (we lived in La Prairie, 20 min from Montreal) where they had a furnace. We played cards, Monopoly, all kinds of activities to keep the spirit.

I was only 4 when it happened. I lived in the Southshore on Montreal. I remember going to my Grandparents because they had power. I don't remember much of it, but it was exciting in the eyes of a preschooler. It's really cool to see how disastrous it really was.

As disastrous as it was, it could have been way way worse. Millions were very lucky that the temperatures for the week or so without power remained just below zero. Had we gone into a deep freeze, which was extremely possible after the ice storm, the results would have been unimaginable.

It’s terrifying cause the narrator will list these terrible things happening each day and then kept saying “but it’s far from over” or “but the next day something worse happened” and it happened for weeks for people! This definitely made me tear up, these are some strong people

I didn't experience the storm, I'm in New Orleans. incidentally an arcadian from Nova Scotia 2nd generation. this was such a sweet documentary. made me cry.

I do remember that winter, I was 23 years old and my son was 3 years, we went to my moms house, actually my whole family was at my mom's house because she had electricity... it was scary. The first day of the storm, I went to bring my son to kindergarden and I went to get him maybe an 1 hour after I left him there... it was getting worst by the minute. It was beautiful but so dangerous, it was like bombs of ice falling. I will never forget that ice storm. Tomorrow will be the 25th anniversary of that winter.

This is making me so nostalgic as someone who lived there in 98 as a kid and went through it ❤

I was 7 when this happened.. my little brother was born during the ice storm. My dad was a linesman and I remember seeing so little of him at the time. The whole family gathered anything we had and we spent a month down the road living at my grandmother's with one small generator and her wood stove. I remember the adults took shifts day and night to keep the stove going. We lived out in the country, surrounded by mostly forests, one of the memories that stands out to me the most is how deathly silent it was some days afterwards, save for the constant snapping of trees and creaking of the ice echoing all around us at all times of the day and night. I remember looking out at in the fields and seeing the power towers in the distance folded like paper from the weight of the ice. I remember cutting and stacking firewood with my uncle and my dad when he would come home. Cleaning the ashes out of the stove. I remember my family digging a hole in the ice and snow in the yard by the back door and using it as a freezer My moms side of the family owned the corner store in the village and we were rationing water jugs and snacks for our neighbours. Some nights, families would walk around visiting each other and just hangout around the fire for hours, I remember all the folding chairs people left in my grandma's basement. I remember my using skates to get to the store sometimes. I got really good at lighting candles and playing card games. I remember my newborn brother constantly crying and along with the storm and our uncomfortable living situation, we never got much sleep. I remember some of our farming neighbours losing livestock.. Car accidents in front of the house. I remember lots of people looking out for each other every day. Small village, everyone knows everyone.☺ To this day we still lose some of the trees that were permanently bent from the ice. The amount of downed trees changed the path of the creek in the woods and it effected the whole ecosystem around my family's house.

30:20 - And that says it better than anything else here! It has to be bad when you wish you where in Winnipeg in winter.

It truly was a super storm. We Quebecers pride ourselves on be resilient to the insane weather we see. But the 98 ice storm was our infamy. I was only 3 years old and at the time my parents and I were living in upstate new York as my was going to school there. But my mother being a nurse and my dad seeing his family back home would need help we went back. I don't remember much at all honestly but my grandmother has an album of pictures from the storm. My dad and his brothers went to help a local logger in Pincourt on Ile Perrot to help clear roads and cut up fallen trees. There is a photo of my dad and his brothers standing up on a massive fallen tree cutting it up like Nordic warriors against endless ice Armageddon. The hydro workers were true heroes in those crucial days in January 1998. They kept that one line standing and we stood up to mother nature. We know she will be back....she always is every year....that's why the new towers we built are re-enforced. That why many of us have generators now in our house and chain saws in garages. We will fight the ice again....yet I hope not to this level.

I was a child when this hit. We were out of power for 9 days. Thankfully we had a wood stove and was able to cook, heat water, and stay fairly warm.

Wow...I don't recall what happened around Jan. 1998 in Nova Scotia, but my goodness that was horrid!!! I know there is ice on the harbour water at some point, and that was crazy enough! Made me misty-eyed seeing people come from all around to help people out, I always like when I see that from such disasters. ❤

I was 3 or 4, I was living in the 'Triangle of Darkness' from my childhood perspective I had a blast. Watching this now made me incredibly emotional. Its very different when you watch documentary about a natural disaster of your own home. They showed a lot of houses and streets in NDG, A handful of these houses I've restored the masonry of them over the past 10 years. I wanted to watch something that was going to be interesting, I didn't think it was going to be such a emotional rollercoaster.

We had a wet snow fall of unusual scale this winter here in Stockholm. It was nothing like this one, but even on that scale a lot of trees were destroyed and if it had been longer it would have caused severe problems.. luckily for us it lasted only a day or so. This video makes me think what can happen and what needs to be done in preparation 😱

I took my first steps while my family was iced in at my grandma's house during this storm. I've heard so many stories about the power lines and trees bent almost to the ground but I'd never seen footage. Terrifying and beautiful

I was about 7 or 8 at the time. With my brother and myself being fairly young at the time, my family had to get creative to keep us warm and happy. Granted, i believe we had a woodstove back then, and we lived about 6 hrs drive from Montreal, our experience was a little different from the cities. I should ask my mom and dad how they remember the storm. Fantastic documentary.

My older brother was pulled out of basic training to participate in Operation Pick up Sticks, as they called it. Said about how brutal the damage was while escorting seniors and those in duress to community centres for heat and nourishment. Having lived in Montreal for 4 1/2 years and visiting family to the north, winter was no joke there.

I remember seeing the news reports during this storm, but I still had no idea at the time how bad it actually was. I thought the 2021 ice storm we had here in Oregon was bad. We were trapped in our house for 9 days with no electricity, heat or water from just a couple days of freezing rain. I couldn’t imagine what it would have been like if it had been a week of freezing rain.

Although I was not there I sent chainsaws and supplies with friends who were going there from Aspalund tree Co. When they returned they told me it was the biggest disaster they had ever seen. I got my equipment back and was reimbursed for the supplies they used. I was given a hat from Hydro Quebec which I wore proudly. My grandmother was born in Quebec city.

No one who lived through this will ever forget it. We were just south of Ottawa. Trees crashed into houses all up and down our street with power lines in them. I had a huge maple fall into our dining room, live wires across both my front and back porch. The army came and got us out. My street was blocked off. Fire was shooting up the broken poles all night and hydro teams just could not come.

Love the video. I would have liked recognition of the daily communications efforts from the president of Hydro Quebec André Caillé and Premier Bouchard. They were beacons of hope much like the Daily Covid briefings. I would also complete this video with the lesson learned. Hydro Quebec and the government decided to invest massively rebuilding a stronger and better distribution system with ice storms in mind. I am proud and grateful for this strategy especially when we see regions like Texas not doing anything to improve their electric grid after 2 major breakdowns.

"first time in my life I wish I had stayed in Winnipeg" that says it all folks

We were in the affected area in upstate new york. We were without power for 2 weeks, I was 5 at the time so my memories are very vague -- but I remember walking with my dad every day to deliver firewood to the elderly neighbors on our block. What a wild storm!

I am glad I lived through that. It made a very lasting nostalgic memory.

Not as many people were affected in Northern NY only because it is not as densely populated, but the storm was paralyzing there, too! On the sides of the road on the way into Lake Placid, NY you can still see birches that had their tops broken off in this ice storm. People in much of Northern New York couldn't get to work for literally weeks!

I lived in NDG. It was beautiful. But also scary as hell. The area was dark for days and roads were blocked with huge tree limbs that had crashed down all around (large silver maples were common along many streets in the area). And yet, for some odd reason, where I lived (between Sherbrooke and DeMaisonneuve) never lost power. Just that one-block thick strip had power the entire time. Everywhere else, total dark. Hard to describe how eerie a city of more than a million folks can be when there is no power.