The Ice Storm: An Historic Record in Photographs of January 1998

by Mark Abley

In January 1998, five days of freezing rain, up to 100 millimetres, fell in some parts of eastern Canada and the northeastern United States. About 2 million homes – more than 5 million people – were plunged into darkness for up to a month in the dead of winter. It was, indisputably, the storm of the century.

This book is the definitive story of the ice storm, captured in pictures by Canada’s best news photographers. The following newspapers have combined their resources to make this La Presse (Montreal), The Gazette (Montreal), The Ottawa Citizen , Le Nouvelliste (Trois Rivières), Le Droit (Ottawa), The Whig-Standard (Kingston), The Standard Freeholder (Cornwall), The Recorder and Times (Brockville) and La Voix de l’Est (Granby). A portion of the proceeds is donated to charity.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

192 pages, Hardcover

First published October 24, 1998

About the author

Mark Abley is a Rhodes Scholar, a Guggenheim Fellow, a husband and a father of two. He grew up in Western Canada, spent several years in England, and has lived in the Montreal area since the early 1980s. His first love was poetry, and he has published four collections. But he is best known for his many books of nonfiction, notably Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages and The Organist: Fugues, Fatherhood, and a Fragile Mind.

His new book, Strange Bewildering Time: Istanbul to Kathmandu in the Last Year of the Hippie Trail, describes his travels across west and south Asia in the spring of 1978. Mark kept detailed journals during his three-month journey, allowing him to recreate his experiences from the standpoint of a much older man.

In 2022 Mark was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Saskatchewan for his contributions to the literary community.

Reviews

[Karine Lambert · Rating 3 out of 5]

3+1/2 ⭐
Souvenir de cette tempête historique lorsque j'avais 14 ans. Cela m'a permis de voir les dégâts vécus dans d'autres régions et aussi toute l'aide qui avait été nécessaire pour le rebranchement.

[Linda Brennan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Memories!

[Simon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I vaguely remember this happening, I was 5 after all.
The community of people and the way tragic events overtook us for several bitter cold days and how we all pulled through and helped each other was a monumental achievement of the human compassion and rising against mother nature.

This was a probably one of the great events in history to later inspire what would become the epic disaster film "The Day After Tomorrow".

If such events happened today, that is the movie that people would be reminded of and make jokes about.

[Vivianne Welford · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great souvenir for those of us who lived through it.

[Lyle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Finished in the snow storm day.
But I still wander how people live in those days. The book did not tell so much about it.