Posted 11:22 AM by Paul
Black Out in the One Super Power


Yesterday we went to Niagra - my first visit since the summer of 1971 when I seemed to be the only teenager in Ontario with long hair.

It is impossible for me to convey the mixture of awe, terror and exhileration that I felt looking watching the millions of gallons of water racing over the lip of the falls. It had made the same impression 32 years earlier. After lunch we went on the trip below the falls and watched mesmorised as the torrent poured from above. But the most beautiful moment was when looked up from the bow of the Maid of the Mist to see the Horseshoe Falls above us filling our field of vision - the fading light refracting through the cascade in shades of purple and aquamarine. I held on to the kids feeling fear and wonder.

We managed to take the last ride of the day on the Mist of the Mist because they were closing down early. We heard that a major power failure in the surrounding area had stranded some people in elevators. Sensibly the Niagra Park authorities did not want to take the risk and we had to walk down the slip road to take the boat rather than take the elevator. Very sensible as it turned out as it transpired that at 4.03 p.m. a massive power failure had cut the power to over 50 million Americans and Canadians. A mixture of under investment, deregulation and mismanagement had plunged the Eastern Seaboard and Southern Ontario into darkness. In New York thousands were stranded on the subway. They must have thought at first that this was all a postscript to 9-11. Another terrorist attack.

Niagra was lit up like Christmas when we left at 9 p.m. and it was only as we drove towards St. Catherines that we noticed whole areas in compelte darkness. On the radio we heard George Bush say that the whole black out was possibly caused by a lightening strike in Upstate New York near Niagra. This is a fascinating theory given that it was a hot almost cloudless day with no rain. Maybe someone should tip off Bush's spin doctors that when you are looking for an excuse to cover up some major political failure you shouldn't choose one that 50,000 tourists can rubbish by calling their local radio station or logging on to their blog site.

Our power in Waterloo Southern Ontario came back around 3.00 a.m. Over breakfast we were amused to learn that Major Bloomberg of New York was blaming it all on the Canadians. Apparently they were using too much power and had crashed the system. Clearly, Americans do not use air conditioning and by divine right have prior claim to the billions of mega watts generated in Canada. But New Yorkers are not stupid. They will see through this as an attempt to explain away chaos from a man whose response to the economic down turn after 9-11 and the decay of public sevices was to ban smoking in public places. Tokenism is the word that springs to mind.