Montréal, Canada

And it was cold.

But then it was January, and Canada's not famous for balmy temperatures. This year was different; it wasn't just the cold, it was the ice storm. The storms had swept across north eastern North America a week before and had caused devastation -- not least in Montréal.

I'd never flown into an official disaster area before. I'd thought the applause for the pilot on landing a little over generous until I looked out of the window at the ice rink on which we'd just safely touched down. The whole city was creaking under the collective weight of three feet of ice.

Our traffic jam chugged from the airport to the city; the houses on my right looked like lightly iced cakes and the lorries above on my left formed a never-ending conveyor belt, exporting the snow out of the city to who knows where. It was like a romanticised image of communism Siberia style: a queue of traffic detectable only by the dim headlights, a monochromatic goods yards stretching as far as I could see, and at the end of it all -- like a sentimental ending for a film of redemption -- a glorious orange sunset.

The city's outskirts were rather Dickensian. Rows of terrace houses, streets completely snowbound, small groups of huddled children and, of course, that other well-known scene from "A Christmas Carol", parked cars crushed by trees amidpower lines brought down by the sheer weight of ice. This really brought it home -- this wasn't some playground -- this was serious. People were genuinely suffering.

The next morning, I sat in the kitchen at the B&B. It was on one of just a very very few streets that had never lost electricity. Tracey -- omelette chef supreme -- and I listened to CBC's Dave Brunstedder with all the latest on Ice Storm '98. Dave was great, managing a mix of the sympathetic and consoling with the up-beat and perky.

I stepped outside. It was bleak. I walked towards Vieux Montréal and noticed the giant 'Q' on the Hydro Québec building was lit up for all to see -- just as the company was urging residents to limit their use of electricity. The irony clearly wasn't lost on staff there either, the sign was switched off later that day.

Many of the streets in the old town were closed because of the danger of falling ice. Looking up I could see chunks perched precariously on roof edges and I made sure to walk in the middle of all roads. At the harbour, I half expected to see dozens of warmly clad ice-skaters skimming over the frozen water. But nothing so idyllic met my eyes. Quiet, empty spaces. Route Barée. It started to snow.

I walked back downtown to see what was open and more importantly where I could get hot food. My legs were starting to set solid, and I quickened my pace in search of one of the entrances to the underground city. Very little was open, although there were still quite a lot of people around. I reached The Eaton Centre relieved to see it had just opened, but startled at how much of it was cordoned off. Thankfully, the only accessible area was downstairs -- home of the foodcourt. My legs thawed out as I wolfed down a welcome bowl of soup.

I made my way gingerly up Blvd. St Laurent. The main roads downtown were already driveable but the pavements were treacherous. I slid and stumbled into the warmth of a nearby coffee shop, thankful that some things were returning to normal, and settled down with the paper.

The novelty value of being anywhere in these conditions was wearing off quickly, but thankfully I had some friends in the city. We got to the Parc cinema to find it crowded. I briefly thought this was surprising for a midweek matinée until I realised that the universities were closed, this was the student part of town, and there was nothing else to do. And it was warm. We settled in to watch the interminably long Boogie Nights. A segment ended. Black screen, white text: "The Eighties". And then the screen went black. We sat there for a few minutes until it dawned on us all that this wasn't P.T. Anderson's social commentary on the boomtime decade, this was a power cut.

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