Scattered frost (a sevice of sharing for victims of the ice storm).

God "spreads snow like a blanket and scatters frost." Those words from Psalm 147 accompany the January photo in this year's Presbyterian Church calendar. It is a picture of crystalline beauty. The sun shining on a frosted orchard, the trees casting their shadows on a blanket of untrampled snow. It is a world charged with the grandeur of God.

But the ice that came to Eastern Canada on January 5 did much more than scatter frost.

It sent millions of people into cold and darkness. It toppled Star Wars-like transmission towers and played havoc with aged hardwood forests. It created a picture more suited to the words of Samuel Coleridge than those of the psalmist:

The ice was here, the ice was there,

The ice was all around:

It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,

Like noises in a swound.

("The Ancient Mariner")

Millions of Canadians became like ancient mariners relying on the stars. Disconnected from their wired worlds, they navigated through the darkness by gasoline, firewood and candle-wax.

No, this was not the occasional brief power loss remembered from childhood, when Dad would curse (or, rather, a reasonable facsimilie of curse) the flashlight that never seemed to work when needed, while Mom quietly got out the candles. Moments such as those were adventures of the highest order. This storm was no adventure. It was a mind-numbing, body-wearying test of endurance that pushed nerves to the breaking point.

I thought of my mother often over the first week of the storm. She spent three days without power, reading her cherished newspaper by day, missing her beloved television at night. During our daily telephone conversations, she would bring me up-to-date on life in her world: how she walked two kilometres to a store which let customers shop four at a time by flashlight; how a tin of canned pasta eaten cold tasted like a banquet. She assured me continually she was fine. "There are so many worse off than me," she would say. And she was right. Her power came back on the fourth day. For others, it would take weeks.

It was not only the telephone poles and trees that felt the weight of the ice, but the shoulders of all the people affected. They were weighed down by grief (at least 27 deaths have been attributed to the storm), personal loss and extraordinary fatigue. The pensioners who had to throw out a week's supply of frugally purchased groceries. The farmers who had to squint through tears while they destroyed their livestock. The hardwood and sugar maple growers who felt the cracking of tree limbs as their own.

And the big picture is staggering. The Conference Board of Canada estimates the storm will result in a short-term loss of $1.6 billion to the Canadian economy. Quebec alone will suffer a loss of $1.4 billion. Farmers will lose roughly $25 million -- $14 million in Quebec and $11 million in Ontario.

As disheartening as it may be, natural disasters also have a way of revealing humankind's baser instincts. The ice storm was no exception. Some people told of the "friendly" neighbourhood store doubling the price of milk and bread. Soldiers assigned to help with relief work had to be given the power to arrest looters in Montreal. Meanwhile, police in Quebec and Ontario found themselves faced with a new activity, one they dubbed "generator crime." The third week into the storm, thieves on the outskirts of Montreal drove off with a truck carrying 110 gasoline-powered generators. Officially worth $250,000, the load was priceless in Quebec. In Ontario, provincial police recorded at least 68 cases of generator theft.

But humankind is also wonderfully resilient. Equipped with perseverance, humour and God's grace, the saints (or, at least, near saintly) outnumber the sinners. The ice storm brought help from across the country. The Internet crackled with storm updates, offers of assistance and correspondence. And the people without heat and light waited. Their stories were countless.

It Helps When Your Brother Is a Truck Driver

At 5 p.m. on January 9, an 18-wheeler pulled up in front of First Church, Brockville, Ontario. Inside the 16-metre trailer were almost 23,000 kilograms of emergency supplies for the Brockville and Cornwall areas. Inside the tractor were Rev. Ryk Brown, minister of Aldershot Church, Burlington, Ontario, and his brother Greg, the driver. Their arrival marked the culmination of days of effort by Aldershot Church and Chalmers Church, London, and hours of organizing by Ryk, Rev. John Bannerman of Chalmers, Rev. David Jones of First Church and Rev. John Crowdis of St. John's Church, Cornwall.

"I've lived through two tornadoes," says Ryk, talking about the devastation they encountered. "It looked just like a tornado had hit -- but only the trees. The buildings were left standing. That's the only way I can describe it."

There were many similar missions of mercy, in vehicles of various sizes. Rev. John Giurin, minister of the Norval/Union charge in Norval, Ontario, and clerk of session Phil Brennan used a cube van to deliver approximately 60 boxes of supplies to the eastern Ontario communities of Gananoque and North Augusta. The congregation of Trinity Church, Kanata, Ontario, delivered a "very large" station wagon loaded to the brim with soup, hot food, muffins and bread to a community centre in Newboro, Ontario. John Crowdis and his pet rabbit set out from Cornwall in his small import to bring needed items to a friend in Montreal, but never made it. His car hit some ice and rolled over on the side of the highway. (Although they came within a hare's breath of serious injury, we're pleased to report both John and the rabbit escaped unharmed.)

Shelter From Life's Storms

For five days, members of the congregation of Trinity Church in Amherstview, Ontario, east of Kingston, provided around-the-clock staffing at a shelter. That shelter was Trinity. The church soon became a clearing house for calls from the community offering food or accommodation. The response was so great, offers of food had to be turned down and no one had to spend the night tossing and turning on the army cots set up in the sanctuary. The congregation also delivered coffee and soup to people determined to remain in their unheated homes, donated firewood, operated sump pumps, cleaned water-damaged basements, trimmed trees and provided transportation.

"It has been said that God does not send the bad times, but God can redeem them," says Barry Van Dusen, minister of Trinity Church. "What an opportunity we have been given to see and to be a part of such caring and such love for one another."

A World Turned Upside-Down

When the ice came to Chateauguay, Quebec, Lynne Donovan, the minister of Maplewood Church, found her thoughts returning to the Mohawk Crisis of 1990. At that time, she had been part of a mobilized clergy: organizing prayer vigils, talking to the media, delivering food (on the sly) to the reserve, leading and caring. But when the lights went out in her home two months ago, "paralysis set in." Her first thoughts were for her nine-month-old son playing on the floor at her feet. As the hours went by, Lynne's only goal was to find a place of warmth for him. Several members of the congregation called her to come over but, one by one, these places of comfort also became cold and dark. They found themselves following the heat. In the end, she camped out at a member's home for 11 days.

Lynne found not only her world turned upside-down, but her identity as a leader and care-giver as well. No matter how hard she tried, she could not retrieve her professional role. "I had to accept that the tables had turned and I had to open my arms to receive, not to give," she admits. "I think my experience gave me a better understanding of what Jesus meant when he talked about the need to receive the Kingdom of God like a little child."

Presbyterian World Service and Development has been working closely with the presbyteries in the storm-battered regions. All funds collected by PWS&D will be directed to the response efforts being co-ordinated by those presbyteries. Money has come in from several congregations (including some who remember a watery disaster in their own part of the country -- First Church, Portage la Prairie, St. Andrew's, Brandon, and Lenore Church, Lenore, Manitoba). Donations can be sent to: Presbyterian World Service and Development, 50 Wynford Drive, North York, Ontario M3C 1J7.

I-I-I-I-I-I Do-Do-Do-Do-Do

When Daniel Duckworth and Shirley Zarbi began making wedding plans last summer, they decided they wanted to be married on the anniversary of their first kiss -- January 10. So on January 10, 1998, despite the ice storm of the century, they gathered with family and friends in the candlelit and chilly sanctuary of Briarwood Church, Beaconsfield, Quebec, to exchange vows. The guests wore boots and coats. The minister, Andrew Johnston, shortened his service to three minutes and assured the couple that if their love was strong enough to drive them to matrimony under such trying conditions, their marriage would certainly be a lasting one.

"It was something neither one of us will ever forget," said the groom, a claim made by most newlyweds. In Shirley and Daniel's case, however, the claim carries extra weight. With their own car stuck in the driveway, the bride's parents had to chauffeur Shirley to the wedding in her van, which was low on gas. Things grew even more complicated when they discovered the only gas station available had a 45-minute wait. Shirley's mother solved the problem by telling everyone ahead of them she had a bride in the car who was late for her wedding. They soon found themselves at the front of the line. Then there was the reception. All the carefully prepared food had spoiled, calling for improvisation and a quick shopping trip. And the reception had to be moved from a community centre to the couple's home, where a wood stove kept the crammed guests warm.

"It's true we didn't get to have a big fairy-tale wedding, with a big head table and music," says Daniel. "But it was magic just the same." A moment of bright magic in a dark world. (From an article in the Montreal Gazette)

Start Me Up

Even those "paragons of virtue," the Rolling Stones, played a role, however indirect, in bringing relief to the storm's victims. Two catering trucks on their way to a Stones concert in Montreal found they were unable to get any farther than Vankleek Hill, Ontario. When the storm forced the cancellation of the concert, the catering crew stayed to help out. And so it was, that area residents found themselves dining on stuffed peppers and cabbage rolls -- what Rob Martin, the minister of Knox, Vankleek Hill, and St. Paul's, Hawkesbury, called "really amazing meals."