When the Lights Go Out

A devastating ice storm transforms into a profound lesson about resilience, community, and finding comfort in the chaos when nature unleashes its fury. What began as routine storm preparations quickly evolved into a harrowing ordeal filled with falling trees, powerless nights, and unexpected moments of connection.

Living with my 93-year-old father during this crisis revealed both vulnerability and strength. Unable to use his usual entertainment sources and restlessly wanting to help despite physical limitations, he showed me how isolation affects our elders – especially when he admitted having no nearby friends to turn to. Yet together we found unexpected joy in adversity: heating pizza on the propane fireplace, wearing toques indoors, and sharing stories by flashlight while rationing my precious cannabis supply.

The storm illuminated humanity's dual nature. While some frustrated citizens berated exhausted hydro workers, others exemplified extraordinary kindness. Team Rubicon – veterans volunteering for disaster response – cleared massive debris from my father's property without charge. Neighbors we'd never met checked on each other, friends opened their homes for showers and phone charging, and workers from multiple provinces labored tirelessly to restore power.

This experience reinforced why I created the Bite Me Cannabis Club – because community matters profoundly, especially during life's storms. Like cannabis itself, human connection provides essential comfort in challenging times. Join our community at JoinBiteMe.com and share your own stories of finding light in unexpected places.

Chapters

• 0:04 Welcome to a different episode
• 1:47 The night the trees broke
• 7:32 Power outage challenges
• 11:33 Team Rubicon to the rescue
• 18:02 Finding comfort in cannabis
• 20:41 Gratitude for community and connection

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

Welcome, friends, to episode 294. Today's a little bit different. Today we're talking ice, ice baby and community. Stay tuned. Welcome to Bite Me, the show about edibles, where I help you take control of your high life. I'm your host and certified gonger, margaret, and I love helping cooks make safe and effective edibles at home. I'm so glad you're here, friends. Welcome to the podcast that explores the intersection of food culture and cannabis, where I help home cooks make great edibles in their own home kitchens. I'm so glad they're here with me today. It has been a wild week.

Speaker 1: 0:42

Yeah, this is a little bit of a different episode today, and the last few days have been really odd. They have been really odd. But why am I talking about this today? I think it's in large part because it's given me a chance to really think about people and community and the two things that really keep us going what the world would be like if we didn't have that. And it just became so obvious during this latest crazy ice storm that ended up affecting myself and my father in ways we couldn't have imagined. I'm glad you're here listening with me today, even though it's a little bit of a different format. So happy you're here If you're just joining for the first time. I would love to know where you're listening from If you've been here for a while.

Speaker 1: 1:24

Thank you so much for tuning in once again to another fantastic episode. Can you believe 294 episodes? Sometimes it kind of boggles my mind a little bit. I never thought when I first started out almost six years ago I'm coming up on six years I never thought that I would still be doing this all these years later. But unlike most of the jobs I've had for my adult life, I actually like this one. So that's one of the reasons why I keep doing it and in large part, one of the reasons why this is such a great vocation is because of you listeners. So thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate you. So maybe I was going to do a trivia question, but you know what I think today. I'll skip it. I'm not really in the mood.

Speaker 1: 2:07

We had a major ice storm roll up. It turned out to be a lot more serious than people were probably really predicting it would have been Now. It was serious enough that I had gone out. The storm was supposed to come on a weekend and I had gone out and done a bunch of grocery shopping. I even made a stop at Costco to pick up some things because I was anticipating not wanting to leave the house because it was calling for freezing rain, which makes driving conditions dangerous. I had books to read, I had podcasts to listen to, I had edibles to eat, edibles to make, I had plenty of things to keep me busy for the weekend and, of course, what transpired was much worse than anybody probably anticipated.

Speaker 1: 2:46

But this episode is not just about weather chaos, but about community gratitude and connection, plus a few cannabis-fueled survival tips, of course. So let's get into it. Let's get into it. So you may be wondering well, why are we talking about this and you're not doing your regular programming, margaret? And I'll tell you, because I have not been super ahead of the game.

Speaker 1: 3:14

A lot of the times I like to have several episodes in the can, as we like to say in the biz, which is actually a reference to movies and nothing to do with podcasting at all. But I like to picture that, or I like to use that phrase, but just having a few episodes in the bank, if you will. And there are periods of time where I have plenty of episodes in the bank and I'm ahead of things. It just depends on what else is going on in life, of course, but I was at a point where I did not. I did not have a lot of extra episodes in the bank, and so I was prepping for an episode and this ice storm hit and I really couldn't. I couldn't have anticipated it, mainly because we didn't lose power right away. Yes, we lost power, but the first night of the storm on the weekend and, as I mentioned, I had gone out and run a bunch of errands and I went to bed that evening a little stoned, a little high on edibles, as I normally do, and I turned my phone off. I was probably doing a little doom scrolling.

Speaker 1: 4:17

I went to bed that night and it was getting windy out, and at the house where I live there is a large front yard. There's probably at least 100 feet in length, the driveway's at least that long, and my dad lives in a rural area. I mean, he's very close to the local library and a plaza where you can get all the things that you need. But across the street from us is a farmer's field. There is a house next door, but there's only a few houses on this street three to be specific and there are numerous large mature trees that are on the front lawn and lots of trees on the property elsewhere as well, but these particular trees have been growing for God. I think my parents bought this house 35 years ago, give or take, and they were pretty big when we moved in when I was a kid. I was a teenager when we moved into this house, and so of course, they've had 35 extra years to grow and stretch.

Speaker 1: 5:13

And I went to bed and it was getting really windy and oftentimes when it gets really windy, those trees are swaying and you can hear them and it can sound probably windier than it actually is, just because of the wind blowing through the tree branches. And I was already maybe feeling a little bit anxious because it sounded so windy out, but it was and I started to hear these sounds and it was really spooky because what I was hearing was the sound of the tree branches and trees snapping like twigs. They were so weighted down in ice that whole branches and limbs are just crashing down onto the ground. And not only was it the sound of the branches crashing, but it was the ice breaking up at the same time, which made this sound even worse, and that went on all night.

Speaker 1: 6:00

I did not sleep a wink until maybe five o'clock in the morning. I kind of dozed off but because it was quiet I could be reminded of what time it was because of the chiming of the grandfather clock, which seems that every grandparent I mean, do you know an old person with a grandfather clock in their house? And this clock that my dad has, I know he loves it. I think he built it from a kit years ago and he winds it up every single day and it chimes at every quarter hour and I can always tell I've gotten used to, because it'll have a shorter chime at quarter after and then a little longer at half past and a little longer at quarter two, and then on the hour it'll chime with all the number of hours. So three on the clock in the morning I could hear a bong three times in a row. That was just a nice reminder that I wasn't getting any sleep because I was listening to all of this happening outside.

Speaker 1: 6:54

And of course sometimes I sat up in bed because I was just like is this, aren't these trees going to fall in the house? My bedroom faces the front of the house, where all these trees were, and I was admittedly worrying that the tree limb might crash through the window and kill me in some kind of final destination weird horror film ending. So all night I was listening to this and the next day when I got up, the carnage on the front lawn was unbelievable. I can't believe how many branches fell and this continued throughout the entire day. I sat in the living room and I could watch, because that was Sunday at that point and I could watch these tree branches just crashing down into the ground and there's a bunch of woods at the back of my dad's property. You could open the door and just hear trees crashing in the woods. The trees in the ice and some of the trees closer to the house like there was a few trees that actually made out quite fine and didn't have didn't sustain any damage, but the ice on these trees looked like it was a couple of inches thick. There was so much ice and it was no like just destroyed these trees. We lost an entire willow tree. That whole thing fell down. Several trees in the back woods fell down. My mother's beloved ironwood tree, which is a very hard wood, cracked right down the middle. It's been since cut down because it wasn't going to survive, but it was a pretty scary night.

Speaker 1: 8:11

We did make it out okay because so many trees came down in the area, power went out for a lot of people. We were fortunate, though, we didn't lose power until several days in, and I'm not sure what happened, because I know on the first night when this happened there was a lot of glowing green in the sky and people were telling me that was like transformers blowing, which was also kind of creepy, because I heard this from several people. My dad said he saw that, so I know I wasn't crazy. I heard from several people who lived in town because we live like just outside of town and they were about this the very same experience and it's so weird. When you have these trees crashing down and these the sky glowing green, it's like what is going on. You know we were pretty concerned when we got up the next morning because you could also see a lot of branches in the tops of the trees that had snapped but hadn't actually fallen. So it's probably not super safe to be going out on the front lawn anytime soon until some of those branches can be fully removed. Some of them have just already fallen on their own.

Speaker 1: 9:07

But living with my dad, I was really grateful that I was here to help him sort of assess the damage. I was able to get some people in to help him do some of the cleanup, because my dad, I think, is sometimes frustrated with his age. If he were a younger man he would be out there doing a lot of this work himself, because he's always done that Done. He's always been somebody who putters around the house, he always has a project on the go and now he's just he gets too winded, he gets tired too quickly. But of course, because so many people did lose power I had heard that this, this ice storm hit a pretty large swath of areas much further outside of where I live, like maybe a couple of hours sort of north and south of us. It was nice to see neighbors checking in on each other or friends messaging saying do you need anything, let us know. I know I had my one of my daughters over with her roommates because they needed to charge phones and they wanted a hot meal, so I was able to cook for them and spend some time with them while they were charging up their devices and we were doing okay and it was really nice to unfortunately, under these circumstances meet some of the neighbors that we hadn't met before, because we were checking on people to make sure people were okay and, of course, a lot there was people in the Bite Me Cannabis Club who were checking in and offering you know some comfort as well.

Speaker 1: 10:25

But it wasn't until that storm happened on a weekend and it wasn't until late Wednesday night. It was another windy night and I heard a couple of pops. This was almost midnight on Wednesday. They sounded like gunshots and flashes of light and our power went out and it was probably a transformer somewhere that blew or whatever the things are. I know my terminology if you're working for any kind of hydro company or I'm sorry if I'm butchering this, and I know I am and we lost our power.

Speaker 1: 10:54

When you don't have power, that obviously means you don't have heat. That's pretty obvious, but you don't have water from your taps because it's the electricity that runs the pumps for your taps. You can't flush your toilets without well. Actually you can. What we were worried about because my father is also on a well that there were two sump pumps at the house and I spent the first day emptying a lot of buckets from the sump pump to make sure that it didn't overflow. That never did, but I certainly got my exercise that day and, of course, I had to bring up buckets of water from the sump pump to the washrooms so that we could flush the toilets. That's what we ended up having to do for five days because we had no power, because you can obviously pour water into the back of your toilet tank and be able to flush the toilet, but that also means no refrigerator, no stove, no, nothing.

Speaker 1: 11:45

I mean, I don't need to tell you what it's like when you don't have power. I'm sure there's many of you I know there's many of you that live in areas where it is prone to major weather events and have probably suffered something similar. But I am very grateful that I was here for my dad, because I know he did go down and get a bucket of water a couple of times and I was like dad, I will do it, don't worry. But he really does not like to sit around and, of course, a lot of the stuff that he does, because he's not as active, his eyes aren't as sharp as they used to be, he watches a lot of YouTube and he watches a lot of TV and you take that away and suddenly there's not as much to do. Now he usually does play pool with his friends, but when you don't have power they weren't coming over. Many of them were also dealing with their own problems in their own houses of having to clear up a lot of tree damage, some property damage and some power outages as well. Again, I'm just so grateful I could be here for him, because I heard him bring up one bucket of water and he was just winded from that.

Speaker 1: 12:43

For so long he lived out here by himself, just out here by himself, and I don't think, if possible, anybody should be alone in their last years. I mean, my dad's turning 94 later this year. While I expect he'll be around for a little while longer, he does remarkably well. He did go out with a chainsaw on the one first day after the storm to cut a couple limbs off because some branches had fallen on the driveway, and this was against my advice. But he kind of snuck out when I was doing something else.

Speaker 1: 13:16

We still had power at that point. This is the kind of man he is, he doesn't like to sit around, and so this was five days and he does have a generator but it wasn't working. So we could have had this generator. Like he did get it out, I tried to start it. He tried to start it. Some of the workers that came by to help clear away some of the debris tried it. We did lose all the food in the fridge, which was sort of painful in a way too, because I had just gone grocery shopping and picked up some stuff at Costco and and that was not great. But when you've been without power for five days, I'm not taking any chances. I mean, the fridge has never looked cleaner, that's for sure.

Speaker 1: 13:49

I just wanted to give a big shout out to the hydro workers who are braving really difficult conditions to get the lights back on for so many people. It was estimated at one point that 400,000 people were without power. That's so difficult. I know the house next door has a young family with two young kids, I imagine trying to go about your daily routine when you don't have electricity. So people were having a tough time and I went into a friend's house to shower, charge some devices, try and get a little caught up in some work, and I stopped at a coffee shop on the way through the drive-thru because I really needed coffee and I heard some guy screaming at the hydro workers that had stopped to pick up a sandwich and some coffee before continuing on and he was just screaming at them. He's like I haven't had power for 10 days and you're sitting out here eating sandwiches. So some of those workers were taking a lot of abuse, sometimes, unfortunately, from really frustrated people. So it was a really difficult time for everyone. And there were hydro workers coming in from Quebec and New Brunswick, apparently because the damage was so extensive. So just a huge shout out to hydro workers and also a huge shout out to Team Rubicon, which I had never heard about until this whole ordeal happened.

Speaker 1: 15:03

Luckily I still had battery, still had data on my phone, even if I couldn't charge my phone. So I had to keep it in airplane mode most of the time so the battery wouldn't drain. My phone's not exactly new. I refused to buy a new one until it finally gives up the ghost. So the battery life isn't necessarily so great. I usually keep it in low power mode at all times, just so it doesn't die on me too quickly.

Speaker 1: 15:25

But I happened to look and the local municipality had posted something about Team Rubicon that were coming out to help people clean up some of the storm damage and Team Rubicon is a veteran-led non-profit charity disaster response organization. So when there are major events like this they will dispatch to the areas in need. And I called them up. Our phone line still worked because I had an old rotary dial phone. My dad does have a phone line and thank God because we were able to make phone calls, but of course all of his phones are cordless phones, which meant they wouldn't work. So I was able to take this phone and plug it in and we could make phone calls the old fashioned. They wouldn't work. So I was able to take this phone and plug it in and we could make phone calls the old fashioned way, like I did when I was a kid. It was really taking me back. So I was able to call right away to this team Rubicon because the front lawn was just destroyed and he's a senior on a fixed income.

Speaker 1: 16:21

And by that morning there was a crew of four gentlemen who came out. They had a look at everything that was going on. They started the cleanup, they cut down the willow tree and the ironwood and they they started getting all the branches off the lawns where it was safe to do so and piling them by the side of the driveway. They weren't able. They didn't have the equipment to take any of it away, but they were able to pile it neatly. The second day they came back with a crew of eight and got so much stuff done. Now my dad still has to hire somebody and to finish the job, but the amount of work that these people did free of charge before they were able to go on to the next house and help out somebody else was just amazing. I'd never heard of Team Rubicon before, so I just wanted to give a big shout out to these folks too. They were wonderful.

Speaker 1: 17:07

I was so grateful for the help that they gave my father as well. I've never been. When the power finally did come on, there was a bunch of hydro trucks on the road and they were doing all this kind of thing. And I would say my dad had a pretty good idea which hydro pole was out, because we've lost power for shorter times before and he knew which pole was out, where our electricity was coming from, and anytime he stopped at the local coffee shop when he saw the hydro workers there, he would tell them about pole 236. He would tell anybody who would listen. It still took us five days to get our power back on, but it did indeed end up being that pole, along with some other stuff too.

Speaker 1: 17:43

I've never been so grateful for heat. It was supposed to get so cold that night when the power came on. I believe it was. It was supposed to get so cold that night when the power came on. I believe it was Monday afternoon late afternoon around three o'clock. It was supposed to get very cold like minus, at least minus 10 degrees below Celsius, and it snowed that night as well. But we had heat, thankfully. There is a lot of gratitude that I have in just rebuilding this normalcy, but also the funny moments that my dad and I shared as we heated pizza up on the propane gas fireplace, because my dad has a gas, a propane fireplace that still worked, but because there was no electricity the blower didn't work, so it didn't really push the heat out. You had to stand right in front of it, but you could heat pizza slices on the top. He did try heating some coffee on it as well, which didn't work that great, but we did share some really funny moments with each other, had some good laughs even as we wore toques around the house for several days, and it wasn't even that cold.

Speaker 1: 18:44

Of course I was able to use a little bit of cannabis in the evenings. Now, I wasn't able to make edibles, but I always have a supply on hand and I had a bag of gummies that I was able to make use of. And I did have my dry herb vaporizer. I just had to use it sparingly because I had no way to charge it as well Once that battery died. That was it Now in a pinch.

Speaker 1: 19:06

I'm not a joint smoker. As an ex-smoker, that's not my favorite way to consume in a pinch. I have papers and I can always roll a joint if I need to. I even have a little joint roller, because my own joints are actually pretty awful. I don't, I hardly ever roll. It's not something I've ever practiced, and maybe one day if I ever did. But the joint roller, they work so well and my joints always turn out perfect with it.

Speaker 1: 19:27

And because I smoke joints so seldomly, that that's the way I go and that's maybe I do remember I had a boyfriend a long time ago, many years ago, who smoked a lot of joints and so he would always roll them because he kind of liked doing it and they looked like perfect cigarettes. He was so good at doing it and so I never. I just never learned. And of course, when I first started consuming cannabis, I consumed almost strictly hash, so bottle tokes was my thing back in the day. That was also when I smoked cigarettes. I also smoked cigarettes at that time, which I don't anymore, which is another reason why I'm not really big on combustion, because I have quit a number of years ago now.

Speaker 1: 20:05

But those did create some comfort in this difficult time. It was getting a little stressful in between those moments of humor. But one thing I was really grateful to see as well is just all the way people were coming together to help each other out. Like I said, I met neighbors I'd never met before and friends were reaching out and I was able to help some friends out when we did have power. It just teaches you about self-reliance and community, because it's all well and good to be self-reliant we all do need to be self-reliant to a degree but we all also need community, because it's awfully difficult in this world without it and, honestly, do we really want to be in this world without community? It's very lonely If my dad had been there by himself. It broke my heart because I asked him do you have a friend you could go over and call if you need to take a shower or something? And he's like not really, and that just broke my heart. So I really appreciate those friends of mine that offered their homes up to me to not only me but to my dad as well and of course I have a new appreciation for light and warmth and hot showers and the people who help restore it and all the disaster response folks. Just so much to be grateful for.

Speaker 1: 21:21

Now, to tie this into a little bit with bite me, of course I was enjoying edibles. I was a little less active in my community. I started bite me cannabis club to also create some community, a private space where people can talk openly about cannabis. It's just a really wonderful group of people coming together under this shared love of cannabis. And so if you haven't checked it out, check out joinbitemecom and that sort of gives you all the details about what's involved, because I do find oftentimes a podcasting can be a lonely endeavor. I mean, I'm sitting in my basement right now recording this episode by myself, talking to people that I know on the other end that are listening, and I am so grateful for that. But the community, the Bite Me Cannabis Club, gives me a two-way conversation, so I hope you'll consider joining. I would love to have you there.

Speaker 1: 22:07

I have gone on for far longer than I really expected to and by the time I actually do some editing it might be turn out a little bit shorter, but thank you for listening, thank you for caring, thank you for being here again. I'm. I just hope we'll all take a moment, no matter where you are in your life, to be grateful for those small things that matter that we don't really pay attention to until they're gone. Grateful for the people in my life, grateful for cannabis, grateful for so many things and, I think, spending more time being grateful for our world and some of the beautiful things in it, because there is still beauty in this world, despite the fact that it can be challenging sometimes, and there are some challenging things going on right now. So we'll be back to our regularly scheduled programming now that I have power again and I'm all getting caught up. Until next week, my friends, stay safe, stay grateful and stay high.