Brockville looks back to the ‘1998 Ice Storm’ with new exhibit

Jan. 4 marks the 20th anniversary of the “1998 Ice Storm.” A new exhibit at the Brockville Museum is shining a light on that wintery chapter of our past.

The City of a Thousand Islands was one of many in southeastern Ontario to feel the wrath of Mother Nature two decades ago.

Museum curator Natalie Wood says the public came through when the call went out.

“For this exhibit, we had to reach out to our community and ask for items that could be on loan, those items that people still had in their possession that reminded them or had a story of Ice Storm ’98.”

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The museum is thawing things out with plenty of photos as well as a number of artifacts.

With no electricity, a lantern which was actually used by a local military re-enactor came in handy.

A piece of an ironwood tree that bent under the pressure of the ice is also on display. The exhibit also looks at the after-effect and cleanup of the storm and that features one of Woods’ favourite pieces.

“It’s a stick. It was collected by Sam Kelsey who was a member of a farm cleanup crew that was funded by the government to go to area farms and help them clean up. He was on his farm and he said, ‘I’m going to keep this stick as a souvenir of the work I did and of the ice storm itself.'”

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "It's a stick. It was collected by Sam Kelsey who was a member of a farm cleanup crew that was funded by the government to go to area farms and help them clean up. He was on his farm and he said, 'I'm going to keep this stick as a souvenir of the work I did and of the ice storm itself.'"

A look back at “Ice Storm 98” runs until March.