The Toronto Storm

A few days ago an incredible storm came through Toronto.

It was a microburst, and the whole thing was over in about three minutes. There was a sudden blast from above, around and beyond, and it felt like the Mighty Thor had just hammered the earth and summoned forth all elements of sky.

The wind was haphazard and suicidal, as if careening out of control down a hill, and it gathered the falling rain in unequal, horizontal batches and then smashed it against whatever surface stood before it. The big tree in front practically shattered, and as it scattered before us, we could see one of it’s massive branches wheeling through the sky, and then in just a moment or two, it all stopped, and everything was quiet and strange and wonderful.

The power was out, and all the people living up and down the street came tenderly from their homes to marvel at the fallen landscape around us. Jones, so small and alive, jumped in puddles and walked amidst the rent trees like the jungles they were.

There was a clear, cooling wind that felt like it was coming off foreign waters, and people gathered before their homes to share their stories.

In this densely populated part of the city, we catch glimpses of our neighbours rather than actually know them, but with the storm all obligations of habit and place and order seemed to vanish. We were free of that, sort of, and it was like we could no longer pretend we were strangers.

The neighbour who never waved, the organized looking one with the yoga mat and unfriendly ponytail, well, she waved at us for the first time. Buck, the almost-old man who lives alone next door, the one I thought was an asshole until I discovered he was partially deaf and never heard me saying ‘hello,’ was like an 11 year-old. Excitedly, he rode about on his 30 year-old CCM bike, returning wide-eyed to say things like, “You should see Bernard Street! Trees everywhere!” Dogs now on walks, pulled comically massive branches along behind them. Couples, happy to be without power, happy to know they were lucky enough that being without power was a fun little, adventure rather than a life-altering catastrophe, headed out for dinner. And the basement tenant, as thin and mysterious as a pirate, came up and surveyed the scene. After deducing how to solve the most immediate problem, he got a small handsaw and began to wordlessly cut the fallen branches of the tree, quickly clearing a path on the sidewalk– the ash never once dropping from his cigarette.

All of us now, after something so unexpected, powerful and unknowable, felt a sense of shared, mortal vulnerability. The stable, trusted world we had imagined had been revealed a flimsy thing. Lucky for so many reasons, we all lingered together outside, comforted by the other, like ancients around a campfire, small and humble beneath an endless sky.