Pix

MY BALCONY AFTER THE STORM AND AFTER THE LIGHTS WERE BACK ON

The Attack of the Ice Queen

I call the wallop of freezing rain that many parts of the U.S., Ontario and Quebec the Ice Queen. And like a Disney character, the Ice Queen was in many ways quite beautiful, but at the same time extremely evil.

To many, it was lovely to look out your window or go out and capture surreal photos, such as the ones I took which are featured here. But to others it meant hours, if not days without power. No heat, no lights, no hot meals, no TV, no internet. Cut off from the rest of the world with only a few days until Christmas.

The unsung heroes of this natural disaster?  The brave men and women who worked around the clock removing fallen tree branches, clearing roads and getting power back to over 250,000 (and that's just in the Toronto area.)

Just as surreal as the sights I saw when I took these photos were those same spots barely 24 hours later, no longer coated in a layer of ice, looking pretty much the way they usually do, although getting a closer glance, because of the way they had looked yesterday.