Montreal Davens in the Dark, Cold

By COLlive reporter
Photos by Bill613.com

The Montreal Gazette has described the snow, rain, freezing rain and plummeting temperatures the large Canadian city is experiencing this week as “wacky weather.”

“It’s the worst (weather) conditions that you could bring together and it hampered our ability to get ahead,” Philippe Sabourin, a city spokesperson, was quoted.

And if dangerously icy roads, fallen trees and power lines weren’t enough of a nightmare for residents, more than 150,000 homes and businesses lost their power and were left in the dark and the cold.

Electricity went off on Sunday, at around 3:15 PM, on Westbury Avenue in the aptly named Snowdon neighborhood, where many Chabad families reside, reminding some of the Great Ice Storm of 1998 which happened in January as well.

At the Lubavitch Yeshiva boys school and Beth Rivkah Academy for girls, students continued their studies, the website Bill613.com reports. Some classes were dismissed early when it got dark.

But with power resuming only at 8:30 PM, congregants who came to the Yeshiva for Mincha and Maariv davening found the shul especially dark. Many relied on emergency lights, candles and flashlights to light up their siddurim, the site reported.

An automated phone message was made by Hatzoloh of Montreal to every Jewish home to inform of the dangers of driving and walking on black ice, Bill613 reported. Hatzoloh volunteers already responded to cases broken bones.

And volunteers of the Chaverim organization were spotted around the city, helping people shovel their cars out and giving many a boost or a push to their vehicles.

In all, the Quebec City area got around 15 cm, which was about the upper limit of totals in various parts of Montreal, which also got a total of 15 mm of ice accretion from freezing rain, the Weather Network said.