In the past few days, Toronto has been under a layer of ice that began with a storm last weekend, and was kept up by the fact that we went on to have a truly white Christmas.

On one hand, it’s caused massive amounts of downed trees, power outages, damaged property and folks who went without power for almost a week, in freezing temperatures. On the other hand, it really brought people together. Neighbours, family and friends with power opened their doors, the city pulled together, and in a touching gesture of solidarity 42 hydro workers from all over Manitoba gave up their own Christmas to fly in and help.

Thanks to the power outage, there was a lot less shopping, and a lot more socializing and helping. You could argue that the ice storm brought out a little more Christmas in everyone ;)

That’s not to say there was _no_ shopping. We were lucky – our home and my parents home had power all the way through. We had a lovely Christmas morning, and Santa was very very good to me – so not only did I get to wander around in the incredibly damaged and eerily beautiful Don Valley yesterday, but I was doing it while test-driving my new 17mm-40mm Canon lens ;)