The 2003 blackout was a party for us — but it still changed me

For a few seconds, I thought it was my fault.

On Aug. 14, 2003, I was a university student on summer break, enjoying a lazy Thursday afternoon off. I was home in suburban Toronto, alone in my parents’ place. My mother and sister had left town for a bridal event for a family friend. My father was at work. And, making full use of the empty house, I was cranking music at a ridiculously high volume through my dad’s stereo system. His speakers were much better than mine back at school, you see.

And then pop, the music went off. Everything did. And I thought to myself, “Well, crap. I tripped the breaker, again. Guess I was abusing the stereo a bit too much.”

It happened from time to time in that house. The basement, finished by a previous owner, never had enough amps to spare for the circuits. Tripping breakers was a semi-routine event. I wandered over to the electrical panel and was surprised to discover that it wasn’t me after all. The breaker switches were as they should have been. The power really was out.

WATCH: Toronto remembers 2003 blackout

It was an hour or so before I realized, thanks to a call from a friend, that it wasn’t some localized outage. It was, in fact, what we’ve come to call the Northeast Blackout of 2003. I was one of more than 50 million people cut off from the electricity we’ve come to depend on.

And boy, do we depend on it.

I have no particular survival story from the 2003 blackout. If anything, the main memories are good. My father and I joined family friends for a terrific barbecue by candlelight. My friend’s mother, even without power, put on a spectacular if somewhat eclectic feast I remember to this day. We made a heroic (and successful) effort to drink all the beer before it got warm. We had enough food, barely, to get us through the next day, and the power came back up after about 24 hours. It was hardly an inconvenience.

Some people were genuinely put out by the event, and dozens of deaths were even attributed to it, including a tragic case in Toronto, where a young man who’d survived a horrific accident died after the air conditioning he required to live lost power. A victim of severe burns, he needed climate control to stay cool. Without power, he overheated and died.

There were other stories like that from across North America: pedestrians hit by cars on dark streets, some cases of carbon monoxide poisoning from running generators too close to, or even inside, homes. But nothing like that for me or mine. A bit of a hangover, maybe. Not much of an ordeal.

WATCH: 12 years after massive blackout, energy experts say grid much more stable

Looking back after 15 years, though, even without a close call or a scary incident, the blackout changed me, in subtle ways. Shortly after the lights went out, I used the washroom, and as I was washing my hands, I found myself wondering where the water came from — I’d never wondered about that before, beyond knowing it was piped up from Lake Ontario. How long would it last without power? About a day, I learned later, unless the supply was drained by a major firefighting effort — then it could be hours.

Back in 2003, I was in the habit of driving my car right down to fumes; it was no different on that day, and none of the local gas stations could pump fuel without power. Now I fill up my tank as soon as it dips below half empty. Even if the gas pumps had remained operational, with the debit and credit card machines down, I couldn’t have paid for it. I was (and am) a cashless kind of guy. But now, I keep $20 tucked in my car visor. Just in case I need gas and my card won’t work.

And my car, though not much use for travelling that day, did serve an important role: I sat in it, engine off, using the battery to run the radio. It was the only way to get news. I spent the day listening to Mike Stafford on Mojo 640, the only station on the air in Toronto. One of the first things I did after the juice came back on was buy a decent crank radio. It’s in my bedroom today and still works just fine.

A bit of gas in the tank, $20 in cash and a crank radio isn’t much of a plan for disaster. But my own little reactions and precautions mirror my own little anxieties and experiences. I’m sure that most people who experienced the ’03 blackout, or the 1998 ice storm in eastern Ontario and Quebec, or even the 2013-14 ice storm in Toronto, were changed just a tiny bit, too. Not that they turned into full-blown “preppers” and began digging a fallout shelter in the yard. But they’ve probably done things just a tiny bit differently ever since, even though they may not have realized it for years.

Watch: comparing two ice storms

1:36 A look back: 2013 Ice Storm vs. 2018 Ice Storm

Modern Canadians (and Americans and Europeans) have enormous faith in our little machines and our complicated systems. The phones work. Clean water flows. We have heat in winter and AC for summer. We have conquered the dark of night, banishing it so thoroughly that in our cities, you can barely see the heavens above.

Most of us are now entire generations removed from any real understanding of how miraculous these modern conveniences are — or how new.

What we enjoy today would have been unimaginable to 99 per cent of all the generations that came before us. Our technological progress has truly been that fast. Most of us simply could not survive long in a world like the one our ancestors four generations removed lived in.

When those little machines and complicated systems fail us, it leaves a mark. We may fall right back into our comfortable routines when the power comes back on, but we’re never quite the same again.

Once we’ve tasted that vulnerability, that gut-churning realization that you’re not sure how long the water will keep flowing, it stays with you. Even if the only sign of that is the $20 tucked up in the visor of your car.

Matt Gurney is host of The Exchange with Matt Gurney on Global News Radio 640 Toronto and a columnist for Global News.