August 26, 2009. Western Head, N.S. Electricity.

Electricity coming to town must have made a huge differences in the lives or ordinary people. I suspect that nothing in my life time has made such a difference in customs than did electricity, when it came to town. The day of the storm, we fully expected to loose electricity, which in our home means no water. The water comes from a well which runs by an electrical pump, so when the electricity is not in service, neither is the water pumping. We have no problem cooking or reading as we have multiple flashlights and oil lamps and we have gas grills and stoves, but when the water is not running through the pipes, we have a major task on our hands, especially with a house full of people. The toilets will not flush. So we take precautions. The bathtub was full of water, as were six buckets, just sitting beside the bathtub, ready to be taken to the six bathrooms. Iin the event that the bathtub water is gone, the hot tub held lots more water. Six gallons of water sat in the garage, as well as three cases of bottled water for drinking. We were prepared to both drink and flush the toilets, in the event of a lack of electricity.

But think of what we could not do when the electricity ceases to work. The computer stops working, along with the washing machines and dryers, to say nothing of the dishwasher. The cell phones work for a bit, but soon they won't work either, neither the Kindle. It would be back to the nineteenth century, without all the extra people to help at home.

In my lifetime, technology has made many advances, but mostly on the lines of improvements, not so much to dramatically change your life, as electricity did for every one at home. Communications of course are dramatically better, faster and cheaper, via e mail, cell phones and faxes, but we always had telephones and mail service although slowly, so the communications were of a same kind, not totally different. Transportation too of the same ilk. We could get there by train or ship, now we get there faster and cheaper. But when we loose electricity we loose our ability to function in our modern world. Our life style is dramatically different than was the life of a seventy year old before electricity came to town.

In Liverpool, our electricity was only down for two hours in the morning and one hour in the afternoon. Last Sunday, when Hurricane Bill came to town, our lives were not impacted much at all, except for our causeway, which no longer exists. To drive to Gill not takes 26K of driving around the loop. We were fortunate that Mother Nature smiled on us this time and kept the Hurricane out at sea. But we were reminded of how much we depend on electricity.