Column: A photographer's view of the ice storm of 1998
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As I enter my 40th year as a multimedia journalist at The Kingston Whig-Standard, I can now look back of some of the special events I covered over the past four decades.
Such events as the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics, national and provincial political conventions and elections, a pair of Vanier Cup university football championships, Vicki Keith marathon swims, coverage of the Shafia family murders and the ensuing trial, and the Williamsville District fire in December 2013 are experiences I won’t soon forget.
One other event I haven’t forgotten but hope to experience only once was the ice storm of 1998, which occurred 25 years ago.
Police officers and firefighters never run away from a disaster, they run towards it. As journalists, we have to do the same thing to be able to report on these catastrophic events and how our emergency responders are handling the situation.
So on the morning of Thursday, Jan. 8, 1998, the first day Kingstonians woke up to the ice storm that hit our community hard, I knew I had to get out into the city and document this historic event rather than stay home and hide under the bed covers.
The same can be said for the rest of my colleagues, including Michael Lea, who braved the dangerous conditions during the first couple of days of the emergency to report on the unprecedented event. Lea and I provided the majority of the photo coverage of the storm and its aftermath.
There was no lack of opportunities for iconic photos that day, one just had to look left, right and upwards and a photo opportunity was there.
The first photo I took was of downed trees on the front lawn of a home in my east-end neighbourhood, followed by icicles hanging off the “Kingston 60,500” population sign along Highway 2.
Just over a week earlier, Pittsburgh Township and Kingston Township had amalgamated with the city of Kingston and the border sign for the old Kingston city limits near the Royal Military College had yet to be replaced.
The first thing I had to do was pick up the company car at our Woolen Mill office. Rideau Street was clear at the time, so I was able to get there, but our office was without power so there were only a few staff on duty.
After checking in, I started to drive around the Kingston area and made my way to City Park. I have never been to a war zone, but the area around the park certainly looked like one. Bagot Street, which runs through the park, was covered with broken branches and downed trees and utility poles, and I had to park the car a few blocks away.
I was surprised how mild the winter temperatures were, right around the freezing mark, but for some reason I felt much warmer. Looking back, it may have been the adrenalin of the moment.
My first photos from Bagot Street were of a pair of paramedics trying to navigate a stretcher across the street to rescue an injured person. When I arrived where the injury occurred, the paramedics were taking a young man to hospital who had been hit on the head by an ice-covered tree branch.
Five years ago, while writing a 20th anniversary story about the ice storm, I was able to talk to the man who was injured that day. Dave Shortt, then a 23-year-old, fourth-year student in film studies at Queen’s University was caught outside his home, in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Shortt, a Kingston native, is now a documentary and commercial filmmaker in Vancouver.
“I could hear the trees crashing through the night; it felt like the ground was shaking,” he said. “In the morning, I got up and decided I should go to class, which in retrospect was ridiculous. But I didn’t comprehend the scale of what happened.”
He was taken by paramedics to Kingston General Hospital, where he received 14 stitches to the top of his head.
Next it was on to other areas of the city for more photos. I was able to gather incredible images all day long, including a young boy wearing a parka and reading a book inside his Quebec Street home, people gathering at the Kingston Family YMCA for warmth and a hot meal, as well as city workers and soon the military, working all day long cleaning up the city.
After taking as many photos as possible on Thursday, I had to figure out how to process my film. In 1998, digital cameras were still three years away for Whig-Standard staff. Since there was no power at our Whig-Standard offices, I couldn’t go there, but I was able to have my film processed at Japan Camera in the Cataraqui Town Centre. Our negative scanners and desktop computers were moved from the Woolen Mill to our printing plant on Grant Timmins Drive, which fortunately had power.
That evening, we were able to produce the paper and have it delivered to homes and local stores and keep a publishing streak going of producing a newspaper every day no matter what the weather challenge or mechanical breakdown for more than 100 years.
To successfully put out a paper in those conditions was a miracle and a testament to our dedicated staff led by editors Steve Lukits, Lynn Haddrall and Jack Chiang, as well as technical staff Mike Szafranski and Tim Gordanier, who made sure we had the equipment available and working to file our stories and pictures.
Later on Thursday, I met a Queen’s University graduate student, Ken Bond of Indiana, after his late model Honda Civic was crushed by a large branch outside his Brock Street student apartment. I remember him not being too upset about the damage to his vehicle and was taking everything in stride.
On Friday, Jan. 9, some Queen’s students without power in their University District apartments and houses decided to drive west and home to Toronto. The ice storm had petered out around the Napanee area and the weather was normal west of there.
While walking along Brock Street that day, I noticed a young man with a nice vehicle that was packed with his belongings. He told me later he was heading home to Toronto. He pulled over to briefly park on Brock Street on the Victoria Park side and only a few seconds later, a large branch fell on his front windshield, making the vehicle undriveable.
To this day, I haven’t heard an expletive screamed out as loudly as this young man did after that branch fell.
Early the next week, Prime Minister Jean Chretien helicoptered on to Wolfe Island, which was without power since the storm hit. I remember that being a very chaotic scene inside the island’s community centre.
After the degree of devastation was disclosed and the extent of the power outages in the area, Public Utilities Commission officials had to call in dozens of out-of-town utility workers to repair the Kingston electrical grid.
I remember going to PUC headquarters on John Counter Boulevard and witnessing all the out-of-town workers eating warm meals provided by the city and home-cooked meals provided by citizens for the workers.
On the last Saturday evening in January 1998, my wife and I went to the Capitol movie theatre on Princess Street to watch the blockbuster movie Titanic. When we left the theatre, we saw a parade of hydro trucks coming down Princess Street and leaving Kingston after working on restoring our community’s power for the previous three weeks. They were cheered on like superheroes by people on the sidewalk as the trucks rolled down the street and out of town.
A proud moment for Kingston and a testament to people willing to help others.
I was honoured to have five photos published in “The Ice Storm: An Historic Record in Photographs of January 1998.” The book documented how the storm devastated parts of Quebec and eastern Ontario.
If I’m still around 25 years from now, I’ll still remember the ice storm of 1998 and the way the community rallied to bring our city back to normal after the devastating storm.