If there's one thing we've learned about our city after the ice storm and the floods, we're there for each other. And so, as people pick up the pieces of their lives after the worst tornadoes to ever hit our region, so it is again; a community in need met by a community response.
Whether it's strangers knocking on doors, checking on neighbours or folks helping chop trees, the worst Mother Nature has to give us also seems to bring out the best in us.
It looks like any other community gathering at the Shikun Oz Non-Profit Senior residence on Bateman Drive in Ottawa’s southwest end, but for many of the folks here, the gathering has been a lifeline.
82-year-old Dawn Jewett is celebrating her 82 birthday today. Her four-storey building has been without power since Friday. And until a stranger knocked on her door Sunday, she hadn't eaten.
“Yeah, just peanut butter and bread,” she says, “That's all I had. So it scared me.”
Ottawa resident Kristin Noble connected with a personal support worker yesterday and started knocking on doors in the dark with food.
“The residents, there are four floors, some are immobile,” Noble says, “they can't get out so we went door to door with the PSW, marked down who answered the door and assessed what needs there were.”
Today, they were joined by others wanting to help, including Aminder Chadha and his family who cooked up a big serving of rice, lentils and hot chai tea.
“This is the time when we can help people,” he says, “so we came.”
“It's been wonderful of them,” says a teary-eyed Jewett, “It makes me want to cry, they're so kind.”
So many people responded to the call for help at that building that they had extra food so they headed into nearby Craig Henry to help the folks there.
A few blocks over, it wasn't food that Nancy Oram needed but muscles, after a massive tree toppled on her property. Two "mystery men", Nancy calls them, showed up Saturday to help.
“We wouldn't have accomplished this without their help,” she says, pointing to a massive pile of cut logs behind her, “They’re angels, they truly are.”
There was an unexpected act of kindness for Felix Wong and his bride Maxine Yu on Saturday as well. A power outage meant their wedding had to proceed in the dark and their reception at the Westboro restaurant Gezellig was out of the question until owner Stephen Beckta stepped up and opened his downtown location instead.
“The best part,” says Wong, “is that my wife always says that she has no interesting stories to tell her friends. Well, now we have a unique story to tell, a very unique wedding story.”
Braydon Maxam and Mariah Croteau are still waiting for their happy ending. They share a rental unit on Woodvale Green with two others. They are Algonquin students, all now without a home and one without a car, after one tree topped onto the car and another tree crashed through the students’ home, sending Mariah Croteau and another room mate scrambling.
“I was so scared, I didn’t know what to do,” she says.
“The house is unlivable,” adds Maxam, “and so now we are looking for a place for Mariah and me to live, along with my two other friends. It’s stressful,” he adds, “We have lots of assignments coming up and it’s hard to focus when you’re dealing with this.”
