What's Making News Today

Besides the storm that left most of my neighbourhood paralyzed today there was this story in today's paper. Toronto Paramedics say that three people died this week at one hospital due to incredibly long waits in the ER. Why doesn't that surprise me? When my mother was hospitalized last April we too waited in the Emergency over 6 hours for a bed. During that entire time the Paramedics stayed with her and were unable to be out on the road answering other calls. That's insane...

So the weather, well what can I say. I found some photos from the January 13, 1999 snow storm that crippled Toronto and had our Mayor call in the troops. It's almost as bad today and I actually saw a police car have difficulty negotiating our street.

1999



2008



The plows haven't been around and it reminded me of the day a few years ago when I was having breathing difficulty and racing heart beat. My husband panicked and called 911 thinking I was having a heart attack. Of course now we know that it was probably the arrhythmia, which isn't life threatening. In any case the firetruck made it first and the ambulance got stuck in the snow. There was a second ambulance dispatched and one crew had to push the second ambulance to our front door. By the time they finally made it, the arrhythmia had stopped and I was feeling better. Could have turned badly though, couldn't it?

So here are a couple of pictures of 1999 and today. In case you were wondering, it's not the same house. We were actually in the process of moving during the storm.

It was incredibly peaceful out this morning, hardly a sound to be heard. Gorgeous actually, as long as you didn't need to be anywhere...

1999



2008



The rest of the photos are in my Flickr page on the sidebar.