Stephen Maher on Fiona: A fresh tempest, but a familiar unease

To get my oceanfront home on Nova Scotia’s south shore ready for Fiona’s arrival this week, I had to move the floating dock out front.

We didn’t know on Thursday if there would be a storm surge, if the salt water would stay where we like it or get pushed by the tremendous force of the storm onto the land, as happened during Dorian, which gave this shore a hard knocking in 2019.

The models showed that Fiona was veering east, toward Cape Breton, but the storm was so big and powerful — with 10-metre waves — that there was no way to be sure how it would hit us.

I was afraid if I left the dock in place, Fiona would turn it into a battering ram, and smash it repeatedly into my summer place, turning it into kindling and damaging the building.

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I waited until high tide Thursday night, put on my swim trunks and undid the lines that normally keep it lashed in place. I had to wait until full high tide before there was enough water under the heavy 16-by-8-foot dock for it to float.

The North Atlantic is typically chilly even in high summer, so I wasn’t looking forward to spending 30 minutes immersed in it at sunset, untying knots in heavy rope underwater. I planned to hop into a hot shower afterward, expecting my extremities would be numb.

But the water was surprisingly warm, and when my phone rang after the dock was secure I was comfortable enough to stand in my trunks and have a long chat with a friend about storm preparations.

The warmth of the ocean, while pleasant for me, is also what allowed Fiona to move north so quickly, to be so big and dangerous.

When I was a kid, in the late 1970s, when the remnants of a hurricane swept over Nova Scotia, my family sat it out in our summer place in Lower Economy, listening to the wind howl and the rain pound.

When the wind died down, my father took me out to the clifftops as the eye of the storm passed over us. It was a strange feeling, with low pressure but no rain to speak of, and we could see far out over the brown roiling waters of the Minas Basin. We stood there in silence for a while, absorbing the eerie feeling, and I told him that the power of the storm was disturbing to me. I didn’t know until then what Mother Nature could do.

My father told me that he found it comforting, that it was nature’s way of regulating itself. He explained that hurricanes were the way Mother Nature transferred heat from the south to the north, a lesson that stuck with me.

This week, after I got my place closed up, I drove inland to my mother’s place, to sit out the storm with her. The power went out at midnight. The wind was howling. There were flashes in the sky from time to time, likely transformers blowing.

We were safe but felt uneasy. I got into bed and spent hours listening to the wind and CBC radio from Halifax. Jeff Douglas, formerly a host of As It Happens, hosted an overnight Atlantic call-in show, passing along what information he had as the storm moved in. It was worrying to hear about the wind speeds. A station at Arisaig, north of Antigonish, reported gusts of 172 Kmh before the storm even made landfall.

The warmth of the ocean, while pleasant for me, is also what allowed Fiona to move north so quickly, to be so big and dangerous

In truth, there was not that much to report, but it was comforting to hear the voices of the callers, sharing their feelings as we all sat in the dark listening to the wind howl outside.

My phone was in danger of dying, and we didn’t have a power pack, so I decided to charge it in my van. I got dressed, grabbed a flashlight and cautiously opened the front door.

The wind was strong but not as terrible as the wind I recall from Hurricane Juan, which hit Halifax in 2003. During the height of that storm, I wanted to step out onto the front porch of my house to see what a hurricane felt like. I opened the door and immediately changed my mind.

Fiona’s wind was not so bad, so I dashed through the rain to my van, which was speckled with scraps of leaves, like green confetti.

I had seen the same leaf debris on everything the morning after Juan, when we went out into the sun to look at the wreckage of our city. Halifax had been covered in a coating of leaf scraps. So many giant trees had fallen that the city felt like a jungle. It was warm and surprisingly pleasant to walk through streets that were impassable to cars, to watch men with chainsaws clearing the deadfalls for their neighbours.

I was touched by the scene at the Ardmore Tea Room, a venerable diner familiar to generations of university students, where the fridges had gone out. Rather than let the food spoil, the crew was cooking on barbecues outside and giving away hot breakfasts, bless their hearts.

That night, we cooked with neighbours. Someone had a goose in their freezer that was going to spoil so we cooked it on the barbecue, catching the dripping fat in a tinfoil tray full of veggies from our crispers. We made a sauce out of thawed blueberries and butter and had a lovely meal by candlelight with people who we had never shared a meal with before.

I felt much more connected to my neighbours after that. These events draw people together.

As I write this, on my phone in my mother’s car, parked on a leaf-strewn street outside her house, she is inside with an old friend who can’t make coffee without electricity. We have a camp stove. What a pleasure it was to invite her in and pour her her first cup of coffee of the day.

If it wasn’t for the tragic loss of life that these storms bring, I would welcome them for the experiences they give us, the drawing together with those around us, the insight into the ways of Mother Nature.

But the news from the region is too frightening to enjoy the storm. CBC radio had an interview with the worried mayor of Port-Aux-Basques, where buildings have been torn away from the land, with 12-foot waves smashing the shore.

The water is getting hotter. The storms are getting bigger and more frequent. Mother Nature finds ways to restore balance, which is the way of things, but you can’t help but notice that it’s getting harder for her to do that.

Stephen Maher is an author and journalist