Last weekend marked a tough time for the community of Kitimat, even tougher for those of us down here in Kitamaat Village. I kept a journal of my experience, here it is. Journal entries appear in italics, editorial notes appear afterwards.

Thur. Feb 5
• snowed hard all day; was difficult driving through town
• 10:15 pm: power goes out

Note: I had to make a few stops in Kitimat before heading home to the village after work. After I got home, the lights flickered a few times. From living here for so long, I know that’s usually a sign that the power’s about to go out. I was prepared for it to be out for a couple of hours (I stockpile candles, BBQ lighters, matches, flashlights and batteries for just such an occasion) but little did I know what was about to happen this time around.

Fri. Feb. 6
• alarm went off at 4:00 am instead of 4:30 am
• got up, showered, started shovelling
• gave up shovelling around 5:00 am after managing to make a path to the end of my car
• went inside and went back to sleep
• phone rang around 8:00 am; it was my boss telling me not to come in to work, classes were cancelled
• did some reading; watched TV shows that I had ripped to my tablet
• at some point during the day, I tried to shovel; gave up again
• what I ate today: a banana, an apple, an orange, some raw Pop Tarts, some chips
• fell asleep listening to 92.9 FM hoping to hear news reports but didn’t hear anything
• water was off for a couple of hours; I don’t know if the pipes froze, that might’ve caused the water to stop running

Note: Speaking of batteries, I always have a 9 volt battery in my alarm clock. It operates, but you can’t see the time. I’m not sure why it went off early but I did notice that when the power came back on, it was showing the wrong time.

One of the most frustrating things was not knowing what was going on. The only radio station that I was able to get inside my house gave no updates as to what was happening. When I sat in my car, I was able to get CFNR, which I know usually has a news break at the top of every hour, but I still wasn’t hearing anything about what was going on in my area because there were no news breaks.

Sat. Feb. 7
• 8:00 am: got up, didn’t shower
• started shovelling; made a path from my front door out to the street; ran into some hard-packed snow
• it’s pretty much stopped snowing; there’s still some coming down but very lightly
• 11:00 am: took a break from shovelling to rest and eat; had a cereal bar and some chips
• managed to clear most of the snow that was on top of my car and cleared a path behind it
• as I kept shovelling, I kept getting warmer; started off wearing 2 or 3 layers and heavy ski gloves, ended up with 1 layer and thinner gloves
• 11:30 am: went outside to continue shovelling
• 12:30 pm: came inside to use the bathroom and eat
• 1:30 pm: finished uncovering my car; started it up, let it warm up for a while
• still more shovelling to do: around my car, behind it, garbage cans but I’ll leave that for tomorrow
• total time spent shovelling: Fri. – 1 hr, Sat. – 5 hrs
• cold in the house, hard to keep warm
• around midnight, someone dropped off some chicken noodle soup for me, I ate it immediately

Note: I was trying to conserve my hot water since I had no idea when the power was coming back, which led to my decision not to take a shower that day.

Dealing with the hard-packed snow was difficult. I have an edger that I used to break it up but I was only able to break up small parts at a time and it was tiring. Ultimately, it made things easier because I couldn’t get through it with just a shovel.

Also, while I was shovelling, I looked up at the trees behind my house and realized I had a friend.

As you can see in the picture, there was an eagle perched on one of the tree tops. He stayed there for quite a while. It was nice to have some company.

I started shovelling soon after waking up everyday for three reasons: 1) it was something to do and it needed to be done, 2) I had daylight to work with, and 3) it kept me warm. The problem was, I never had any idea how cold it was outside so I started off dressing as warmly as I could. Then, as I started to shovel, I would warm up and start feeling like I was dressed too heavily which meant I had to keep coming inside to change clothes. I was constantly going in and out of my house, which was disruptive and personally frustrating.

Another thing was that I was hanging up my clothes to dry but since it was cold in the house, they weren’t really getting dry. My ski gloves in particular weren’t drying out which was a little gross.

By the time I got all the snow off of my car, I was still blocked in with a wall of snow behind my car. Part of me felt like I should keep going, but I was just too exhausted to do any more shovelling. I figured it would take me about another 2 hours to completely clear all the snow.

So close, yet so far away.

Below are a couple of pics of my progress.

Sun. Feb. 8
• woke up around 8:00 am, went out to continue shoveling
• 10:00 am: finally finished shoveling; went for a drive around the village; the highway is closed
• total time spent shoveling: 8 hours since Friday
• took a shower around 10:30; running out of hot water, it was barely lukewarm; I might have enough left for one more shower
• went to the rec. and had some soup
• 7:20 pm: the power came back on
• total time without power: 69 hours

Note: It’s interesting to me that I woke up around the same time the last two days when I didn’t set my alarm.

From what I can gather, an evacuation notice went out at about 5:00 am. If so, I never heard about it. Probably because I was sound asleep at that time; but even if I had known, I probably still would’ve stayed home. I had dealt with the situation up until then without much trouble and I really had a feeling we’d have power back soon and I wanted to be home when it did. Also, if I left home, what would I do with my cats? I wasn’t just looking after myself, I had to look after them, too.

After waking up, I was so relieved to finally have all my shovelling done. I could move my car and, considering that I had garbage building up, it was a good to finally uncover my garbage cans so I could get rid of it all. I honestly didn’t know where my garbage cans were, I just picked a spot and start shovelling. When I heard a “thunk”, I knew I was in the right place.

The previous day, one of my relatives told me there was food being served down at the Haisla recreation centre. I meant to go down there that night, but for one thing I couldn’t get my car out of my driveway at that point, and for another thing I’d hurt my knee shovelling so I couldn’t walk down there.

I was relieved when the power finally came back on but the lights continued to flicker for a couple of hours afterwards. I didn’t start to relax until I woke up the next morning and found that I still had power. There have been other times when the power went out again shortly after being restored, so I was prepared for the worst. Luckily, that didn’t happen.

While that wasn’t the nearly longest I’d gone without heat and hot water, it was the longest I’d gone without power. All of my electronic devices had died and I had no way of recharging them. I found an old Discman that I still had and was able to at least listen to CDs and keep replacing the batteries as they died. See kids, old technology can pay off.

Another thing that happened this day was that I remembered I had some bagels stashed away. I cursed myself for not remembering two days before as at this point I was getting tired of eating fruit and chips and it was nice to have something else.

Mon. Feb. 9
• went over to town to pick up some things; lots of trees down all along the highway
• smells like one of the cats peed downstairs; been smelling it for the past couple of days; tried cleaning the floor down there but I can still sort of smell it
• posted on Facebook to let people know I’m okay; I wish people wouldn’t worry about me, I’m a survivor; me and my mom survived without heat and hot water for more than a year before, three days was easy in comparison

Note: The cat pee smell eventually went away.

While I had power, I didn’t have internet. I made my Facebook post from my phone in town.

Overall, it was a tough situation but it really wasn’t a big deal to me. I spent a lot of time reading and sleeping. Having an idea of what was going on would’ve helped, I was pretty much out of the loop. Like, for example: was anything open in town on Monday? I had no way of knowing other than going over and finding out for myself.

Another thing that frustrated me was that I felt like I’d been robbed of my long weekend. I did get the day off work on Friday but I couldn’t have made it out of my driveway if I tried. I didn’t have a choice but to stay home. So when the power eventually came back on, I pretty much had one day to myself and that day was spent cleaning, shopping and getting ready to go back to work the next day. After everything I’d been through, what I wanted was some time to myself to relax.

I also can’t help but wonder: why don’t we have our own power supply out here in the village? The power goes at least once a year (sometimes up to half-a-dozen times or more) and it’s usually because of trees falling over due to either snow build-up or high winds, or both combined. The power lines travel 11 km from town to the village with thousands of trees close to them, it’s little wonder that the power goes out so regularly when the lines are so vulnerable.

Anyway, this was my experience. It might’ve seemed unbearable to some people, but as I said before, I’ve been forced to live through conditions that were as bad or worse for much longer. It was not much of a problem for me. I don’t think people understand just how determined I can be and how hard I can push myself when I’m challenged.

Having said that, I wouldn’t want to do it again.

I got an email today informing me that I started my first Tumblr page 3 years ago. While I no longer post on any of my Tumblr pages, I did find this interesting.

Sometime last year, I consolidated my blogs. The result was this website. When I started blogging, I had a couple of things that I don’t really have now: something to say, and time to say it.

I have looked back on some of my blog entries and realized how long most of them are. You need a lot of free time, not only to write that much, but also to read it. As a writer, you often think quantity over quality. Not to say I think my posts lacked in quality, but I dedicated so much time to writing that it took away from other aspects of my life. One of those things is reading. Work also does that.

Over the Christmas holidays, I found myself with some free time and started reading again. A lot. Since work started again, I haven’t had as much time to read but I have been making more of an effort to do it. Lately, I’ve been reading autobiographies of hockey players.

Today, I just wanted to post some thoughts about my blog. I don’t have as much time to write as I’d like, but I still want to do it. Originally, I intended to write on a regular basis but given my limited time, it’ll be sporadic at best.

My original blog was called Synaptic Wanderings, which was a term I came up with years ago. It referred to random thoughts that the human mind often creates, and my Tumblr page was meant to reflect that. I might post some of these thoughts from time to time, but it probably won’t happen on a regular basis. I’m writing this post while continually wiping cat hair off of the keyboard of my new computer. I don’t know if this keyboard just naturally attracts cat hair or if I’ve just been petting my cats more lately.

Anyway, what I plan to do is to just keep wandering.

Recently, I started reorganizing my blogs. When I first started blogging I created a Tumblr page and that was the start of what would become a bevy of blogs. As time wore on, I gained a preference for WordPress.com for the purposes of blogging. The domain name that I chose is based on my Twitter username: abmoha.

For those who might wonder where the name came from, it’s fairly straight forward. I took the first two letters of my first and last names: AB MOrrison-HAyward.

It was also an homage to a hockey player named Alexander Mogilny. He started his career in Buffalo and got traded to the Canucks where he was re-united with Pavel Bure. People sometimes referred to him as Almo, which was was created by using the first two letters of his first and last names. Originally I named my Twitter account abmo89 or something like that. I figured, Alex Mogilny was called Almo, so I’ll be Abmo. It didn’t quite have the same ring so I changed it to abmoha and it’s been that way ever since.

My first name is actually Albert but I’ve gone by Ab for a number of years. I was named after my mom’s uncle Albert and people around here always called him Abs so they started calling me Abs. I was called that for a while and then, when I started going to UVic and hanging out at the Native Student Union, it somehow got shortened down to Ab. It took some getting used to but I stuck with it and actually started to prefer that over my full name. So much so that I sign my artwork as Ab Morrison-Hayward.

It’s also shorter than my full name and since my last name is hyphenated, that saves some space.

Some of you might wonder why I have a hyphenated last name and the reason is as follows. I was born with the last name Morrison and my mom was unmarried but when I was enrolled in school for the first time, it was under my stepdad’s last name of Hayward. My mom had gotten married and changed her last name and even though I went by Hayward I was still legally a Morrison. This led to me basically having two different sets of ID: one under Hayward and another under Morrison. About 10 years ago I decided to do something about it and I didn’t want to pick one name and leave the other one out so I combined them. Now I carry the name of both sides of my family and I’m the only one in my family that’s done it as my siblings were born with the last name of Hayward so they didn’t have that problem.

That happened during the time that I lived in Victoria, where I was known as Ab and some of my friends didn’t even know my real name. Cut to now where I’m at a new workplace and everyone there knows me as Albert. Whenever I try to introduce myself as Ab, it seems to cause confusion. Especially to students in my classes, they tend to create other variations. I hear Al, Alb, Albie, sometimes even Abe (although how they arrive at that when my name is not Abraham, I’ll never know). Suffice it to say, I’m not really fond of any of those names.

Especially Al. I’m not an Al. Al Borland from Home Improvement, he’s an Al.

Al Bundy, he’s definitely an Al.

They’re both Als. They’re also both fictional characters and I’m not really sure why I immediately went to them but I couldn’t think of any real people. Okay, Al Pacino, there’s an Al.

They’re all Als. I, however, am not. I’m not an Al, never have been an Al, never will be an Al.

Unfortunately, a sad fact of life is that if your name is Alex, Alvin, Alan, Albert or any other name like that, people will inevitably call you Al at some point. It’s unavoidable. There’s death, there’s taxes, and there’s people calling you Al when your name starts with those 2 letters. People feel free to come up with all kinds of variations of your name, whether you invite them to or not or whether you like it or not.

With me, you have two choices: Ab or Albert. It’s up to you to pick which one you want to call me by (psst – pick the first one!). Rather than trying to explain that to people in my classes, I just simplify things and tell them to call me Albert and not leave it open to any variations.

Before starting this job, I had gotten so used to being called Ab that even now, after 9 months of working at a new company, it still seems weird to have everyone call me by my given name. I’ve tried to tell people that I prefer Ab, but there’s only one person who calls me that consistently and I feel like I’m fighting a battle I’ll never win. I have binders that I use on a daily basis and I label them as AB’S (so-and-so) BINDER, depending on what class I use it for, and people tend to read it as A-B. Maybe it’s the fact that it’s in capital letters that confuses them, or maybe something else. I realize it’s not a very common name and sometimes takes some getting used to but they tend to read it as separate letters rather than as a name.

Whatever the reason, I’ve been there for so long and so many people call me by my given name that I don’t think it’s going to change but I’m getting used to it.

Anyway, that’s a bit of an explanation behind the domain name of my blog. This used to be a different blog but I’ve moved that one to a different address. Also, since I don’t use my Tumblr pages anymore, I’ve transferred those blog articles over here. I haven’t reformatted them yet but I plan to do that eventually as some of the articles had embedded media. That was the blog that I called Synaptic Wanderings. For the time being, I’ve merged that old one with this new one and reduced the number of active blogs that I own.

I may change the title of this blog again but for the time being, it’ll be Ab’s Blog.

Not Al’s Blog, or Abe’s Blog.

Ab’s Blog.