By the way, this item from the Canadian Press relives that day, including something that seems amazingly ironic now. 

A news director for a Belleville radio station in 2003 remembers he wasn't actually at the studio when everything went dark. 

"After working the morning shift, he was golfing with friends when word got out the power for the entire eastern seaboard had shut down.“

I then quickly jumped in my car and headed into the radio station,” he recalled.

When he arrived at the station, he realized the blackout was far bigger than a local story.

“It was just very surreal to see every traffic light out, and not just in places like Belleville and Trenton, but right across the province and a large portion of North America,” he said.

So who was it that was in the middle of the Belleville blackout? It was Todd Smith, who currently happens to be Ontario's Energy Minister, a guy who might now know a thing or two about power outages.

How the worst blackout in North America played out in Ontario

In London, the power went out at the same time as everyone else, but we were only out for about six hours. Power was back between 10 and 11pm.

During the evening I listened to CJBK (RIP) for awhile, they were live taking calls. I think they had Steve Garrison come in for that shift, though I might be mistaken.

In terms of print media, I recall the London Free Press managed to put out a paper on time the next morning. The front page was a bunch of people tossing salad in a dark kitchen.

Last edited by MJ Vancouver (August 13, 2023 11:20 am)

You don't know the half of it. I was stuck downtown when the subways went out, but was lucky enough to hitch a ride home with one of our senior producers, who had driven down that day. She took the wheel and headed into a fully blacked out downtown core, with no traffic lights after sundown.

It took tremendous concentration to remember to treat all of them like a four-way stop and to be honest, sometimes she missed a few. There were dozens and dozens of them along the way, most of which were hidden in the dark. 

But that's not all. Pedestrians also didn't have the benefit of the walk/don't walk signs, so they were all over the road at any given minute, going from one side to the other and you couldn't see them. Suddenly, they would appear in the headlights right in front of her, forcing her to jam on the brakes. And she wasn't even going fast, maybe 20, 30 or 40 at most.

It was the scariest and longest ride home I've ever had and I'm still not quite sure how she didn't hit anybody.  

I was at home in Mississauga with my toddler. My husband worked at the Toronto Star’s Vaughan press plant at the time, and he was called in - I *think* they ran a special edition that day? Can’t honestly remember though. We live under the flight path of air traffic into and out of Pearson, and I remember how the flashing lights lit up the rooms as the planes flew over our house.

I was in the studio at 94.9 FM The Rock. Stayed there until the midnight hour arrived. I think I remember driving home in the dark. And as I drove down through the Church and Bloor area the streets were full of folks attempting to escape the darkness. It seemed celabratory.
 

This is way off topic for the board, but I have to ask - how much did that install cost you? I looked into a Generac a few years ago and was quoted a price of $10,000 minimum. Too rich for my blood, as much as I hate blackouts. 

I was at work on the phone, talking to a client in New York when she said the power just went out.  It was a bit after 4pm.  About 15 seconds later our power in downtown Kitchener went out.  

Oddly enough where I live in Kitchener, the power was only off for about two hours.  I was sitting on the deck in my backyard reading the paper, and at about 6:20 our power came on.  And it stayed on.
Even a few blocks away some areas had no power for much longer. 

It interesting the reports on TV of people directing traffic, and in other parts of town neighbours having a street party.  CTV Toronto had Lloyd Robertson in a darkened studio at 6:30 with a spotlight on him.  Pretty interesting since they were able to go to some live reports in downtown Toronto. 

I was at home that day. It must have been during my vacation time. I didn't know the power had gone out because I was working out in the yard. I was digging in the ground and our nextdoor neighbour came over. He thought I must have severed an underground cable.

I sat out on our front step listening to my Grundig wind up radio. My neighbour was envious so I loaned him the radio. I had plenty of other radios and plenty of batteries in the house.

It was a great day for AM radio because there was no man made noise or interference.

RadioActive wrote:

Dial Twister wrote:

RadioActive wrote:

This is way off topic for the board, but I have to ask - how much did that install cost you? I looked into a Generac a few years ago and was quoted a price of $10,000 minimum. Too rich for my blood, as much as I hate blackouts. 

RA, back in 2006, I bought the 12 Kw generator for CA$2,700 from Costco. It was sold under the brandname Honeywell, but it's a Generac inside.

I brought it home in a pickup, unloaded it with a portable engine hoist I own, and placed it on a pad I prepared ahead of time. Next, I dug a trench to run the natural gas and electrical lines to the house, inside a 'BIG O' pipe.

Finally, I added the (price included) transfer switch and then called the professionals to make the final connections. Gas fitter and electrician cost $350.00

Total self-contracted cost was just over $3,000.00

I wouldn't have the knowledge to do any of what you did safely. Thus the extra cost. But congrats on a great deal. That's true peace of mind. 

paterson1 wrote:

Oddly enough where I live in Kitchener, the power was only off for about two hours.  I was sitting on the deck in my backyard reading the paper, and at about 6:20 our power came on.  And it stayed on.
Even a few blocks away some areas had no power for much longer.  

You definitely were one of the lucky ones. As I recall, my power was off for almost two days, which meant trying to sleep in sweltering temperatures, as well as losing a lot of the contents in my fridge and freezer. But the power at work was back on, so at least we had that by the time I got down there. Never been so happy to have A/C!

An interesting and low cost alternative are batteries instead of the Generac generators.    They're mostly the same Lithium ones used in EVs, often upcylcled used from vehicles.   It depends on what you want to power with the system and sounds good for the essentials.  Alternately many people with EVs can hook a DC to AC converter up to their car and power their vital appliances like fridges / freezers, TV / radio and in some cases air conditioning for a few days the same way. 
 

Last edited by SpinningWheel (August 13, 2023 11:44 pm)

SpinningWheel wrote:

RadioActive wrote:

Dial Twister wrote:

RA, back in 2006, I bought the 12 Kw generator for CA$2,700 from Costco. It was sold under the brandname Honeywell, but it's a Generac inside.

I brought it home in a pickup, unloaded it with a portable engine hoist I own, and placed it on a pad I prepared ahead of time. Next, I dug a trench to run the natural gas and electrical lines to the house, inside a 'BIG O' pipe.

Finally, I added the (price included) transfer switch and then called the professionals to make the final connections. Gas fitter and electrician cost $350.00

Total self-contracted cost was just over $3,000.00

I wouldn't have the knowledge to do any of what you did safely. Thus the extra cost. But congrats on a great deal. That's true peace of mind. 

paterson1 wrote:

Oddly enough where I live in Kitchener, the power was only off for about two hours.  I was sitting on the deck in my backyard reading the paper, and at about 6:20 our power came on.  And it stayed on.
Even a few blocks away some areas had no power for much longer.  

You definitely were one of the lucky ones. As I recall, my power was off for almost two days, which meant trying to sleep in sweltering temperatures, as well as losing a lot of the contents in my fridge and freezer. But the power at work was back on, so at least we had that by the time I got down there. Never been so happy to have A/C!

An interesting and low cost alternative are batteries instead of the Generac generators.    They're mostly the same Lithium ones used in EVs, often upcylcled used from vehicles.   It depends on what you want to power with the system and sounds good for the essentials.  Alternately many people with EVs can hook a DC to AC converter up to their car and power their vital appliances like fridges / freezers, TV / radio and in some cases air conditioning for a few days the same way. 
 

I'm not sure that will work for me, but I"m intrigued enough to at least look into it further. Thanks. 

A former radio jock recorded "snippets" of Toronto radio stations on his battery operated tape recorder, on Aug. 15th, the day after the big outage. They're featured on the Internet Archive site, and includes time machine-like recordings from such stalwarts as Bill Carroll on CFRB, 680 News (as it was then called), CKTB St. Catharines and the old late and lamented Mojo Radio over on 640.

It certainly brings the real time frustration of the morning after right back as if it happened yesterday.

Hear them all here. 

And for those closer to the border, here's video from WDIV-TV in Detroit, which managed to stay on the air during the outage, although it's hard to say if anyone could actually watch them. In fact, at one point, one of the anchors addresses "the two people" who might be watching on a battery-operated TV. 

From the Vault: Detroit local news coverage of 2003 Northeast Blackout

Here's a look back from 5 years ago that City tv did on the blackout.  https://toronto.citynews.ca/video/2018/08/14/your-memories-of-the-2003-blackout/

RadioActive wrote:

Longtime CFRB's staffers are recalling that on that day, they were the only station still left on the air, thanks to having a back-up generator. 

I wonder if that's true. I find it hard to believe no other station in town had any power source on standby just in case. Wasn't 680 also able to stay on? 

Frankly, it was such a hectic night, I can't quite remember what I listened to in the dark. There wasn't much else you could do than turn on the radio - another reason the medium is so vital in an emergency. But I do recall CFRB being the station I tuned into for updates most often.

 
1050CHUM was on the air, too!   I was working that night making sure that all the equipment was working.  The generators at the CN Tower failed so none of the fm’s or tv stations that
had their transmitters there were on the air. 

Once we realized it was going to be a long night, we all got into a routine.  I checked that generator many times and also our links to CP24, as we had access to all of those reporters they had in the field.  Assisted the newsroom as needed.

We set up speakers on Yonge Street playing 1050 and handed out every bottle of water we had to people walking up the street.  I remember people standing outside the building listening trying to get information. 

Looking down Yonge street was very strange.  It was dark except for a few buildings that had emergency power.  A few floors of the taller buildings were lit up and when the power started to return, they did it in segments.  We could see the power come on a few blocks at a time.  We got power back at 1:30 AM and CFRB was just shortly after that.  We were able to get CHUM FM back on then, too, as it had power to its alternate site return.

I ran an IT department back then.  The servers (abourt 12 or so) were plugged into a stand-by battery backup and it gave us 45 minutes to gracefully shut the servers down.  Meanwhile, one of the employees, who was the union stewart, was running around the office ranting and raving about how this was Mike Harris' fault.  Strangely enough, she was nowhere to be found when the real reason came to light.

Once the servers were safely put to bed I plugged in a portable radio I had in the office and thanks to CFRB and the incredible coverage of Mark Elliot.

Fortunately, I drove in that day.  However, I didn't realize how difficult it would be to place a call.  I tried calling my wife on the cell phone but the towers were incredibly congested.  All you could do is keep trying until you lucked out.  Eventually, I did and we made arrangements for me to swing by and pick her up -- whenever I got there.  She and a few other people were waiting and we started heading up Yonge Street towards North York.  Needless to say it was long drive.  We got home around 7:00.  There was a nearby meat store that was selling off what product it had dirt cheap just to get it out the door.  We had some nice not so coldcuts and bread for dinner. 

I couldn't believe how quiet everything was.
 

I like my friend's answer when I asked him what he remembered about that day:
"Nothing. I think I was in the middle of a blackout!"