Lucknow resident remembers Blizzard of 1971

To the Editor:
RE: “Kincardine woman recalls Blizzard of 1971”

Shirley Bieman’s recollection of that blizzard in January, 1971, took me back to our experience in Ashfield Township.

We were a young couple with a five-month-old son. We were relatively new to country life, having moved from Brampton. When the hydro went out, we were not prepared. The first night was very long; heating baby bottles over a candle and snuggling together to stay warm.

My brother-in-law was stranded at our place, even though his farm was only half-a-concession away.

The next morning, our neighbours, the Miltenburgs, managed to get us on the party-line and told us to come to their farm which was on the diagonal corner to ours.

My brother-in-law carried our baby, wrapped in quilts, and my husband pulled me behind him as we made our away, in zero visibility and terribly strong winds, across the field. I was holding my breath when we arrived, scared to look and see if our baby was still breathing.

The men eventually made their way down to our brother-in-law’s farm where they loaded up a pregnant mother and their three children and made it back up to the warm home of Reis and Marie Miltenburg (that trip is another story). Several of the Miltenburg children were stranded at school.

The men made many trips back and forth to both farms to feed and water (using snow) the livestock.

We stayed there for close to a week before the hydro came back on. Thanks to a propane stove, we had great hot food, and we were warm and well looked after.

We’ll never forget that storm of 1971 or how grateful we were to have such wonderful neighbours who came to our rescue.

Before the next winter, we had a generator!
 
Pat Livingston
Lucknow.
 
P.S.: Lois Farrish, our son’s public school teacher in 1975 and, subsequently, our Lucknow neighbour for several years, was a teacher at North Ashfield Public School in 1971. She quite often would reminisce about that 1971 storm and the challenges the teachers faced guarding their flock.