Nearly a week after tornadoes ripped through our region, power has finally been restored to the last of the few houses in Ottawa's Arlington Woods.

For one couple, the lights, the heat are the lifeline that will bring normalcy to their lives at the very moment they need it most. It's Gordon Frost's 66th birthday today.  That's reason enough to celebrate.  But there is an ever bigger reason.  With power back on in their home, Gordon who is palliative is able to come home.

That first cup of coffee after nearly a week without power has never tasted better to Linda Willman, Frost’s wife.

But making coffee wasn't the first thing Linda Willman thought of when the hydro finally kicked on in her Arlington Woods home. 

“I wanted to phone my husband and say he could come home,” she explains, “He’s palliative and he wanted to be here and it's where I want to look after him.”

They were both at home when the tornado struck Friday evening and ran into the bathroom for cover.  Frost was sitting in his favorite chair by the patio doors when Willman says she felt an incredible pressure in her ears, grabbed the dog and yelled at her husband to run.

“He saw this tree coming right through the window here,” she says, pointing to the doors near his chair.  Willman says it was surreal coming out of the bathroom only seconds later.

“Coming out into the smell of pine,” she says, “it will change Christmas forever for me.  It will bring all this back.”

Giant pine trees are down all over the neighbourhood, forever changing the landscape.

The sheer magnitude of the disaster prompted beef farmer Murray Dundass from Metcalfe to come to Arlington Woods with his chainsaw to cut fallen trees.

“It was worse than I envisioned,” Dundass says, “and some of it is too hard to believe. You have to be here to see how bad it is.”

Chef Peter Robblee with Otto’s Ottawa came to help to feed the horde of volunteers.

“I can imagine hot food, prepared, everyone is grateful,” he says, “plus all these people clearing trees, they're working hard so, it’s nice to give them a good healthy meal.”

Linda Willman is grateful for all the help and especially grateful to have her power back and soon her husband.  Next on her list are her trees.

“Some of the little inheritance I got from my mom,” she says, “I am putting it aside and it's going to be tree money. I want the biggest trees we can afford.”

One day at a time.  That's what it has taken to restore power to these homes and that's what it will take to return normalcy to these neighbourhoods.