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Blackout 2003

© David Newman

At 16:11 August 14, 2003, the lights went out.

I was browsing the downtown a mega-chain-Canadian-bookstore, when it happened. But that's not really important. My first thought was not that it was a Terrorist attack; actually it was just that the store had lost power. When all the stores and all the streets of Toronto seemed to be off, it still was not of a terrorist attack, I thought, "There goes Ernie's election." I still don't know why Terrorism was even considered on all the radio places I heard.

I actually thought this was kind of cool. I wasn't complaining, for once the sky would not be damaged by light pollution. People would not be putting their air conditioning full blast even though; it's not really that hot out. People would not waste energy, and see that they could do well without it. Sure, I thought of the old people who lived atop buildings and wouldn't be able to walk down all the stairs or the food that was spoiling in all the supermarkets, but really this wasn't so bad, people needed this to get out of our more communication tools-less communication world. Some people don't know their neighbours (can you believe it?) and this was a good opportunity for that.

I don't really care who's fault it is, Canada said the US; the US said Canada. Iraq was saying we didn't have electricity for months, still don't.

Some time in grade eight, my math teacher, we saw this film on the ingenuity gap, and ideas like the fact that collectively we know a lot, however individually we know nothing or a negligible amount of something. The film talked about how we wouldn't really know how to survive if all of a sudden there was no more electricity and no more gas because individually we don't understand how things work, and we no longer know "primitive" methods of survival. They used the Great Blackout of November 1965, when a similar blackout as this one occurred, blamed on some little technical thing surcharging at the Niagara-Mohawk power plant.

I don't really know what that has to do with anything, really, except that people coped then, and they have now. Hopefully people will be more conservative (in the true sense of the word) when it comes to energy and water as has been asked of us from all levels of government.

All in all, seeing the stars, that many stars, while still in Toronto made the whole thing worthwhile.

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