Audio Excerpt

Let’s hop in that time machine again shall we!? It’s May 31, 1985 and we’re cruisin’ down the highway.. The radio’s cranked to 10 and we’re belting out the hit single ‘The Power of Love’ by Huey Lewis and the News… everyone’s pretty happy.. it’s Friday afternoon after all and a power outage just got everyone off work early! A couple minutes later.. We see it.  Someone slowly turns the radio down, our eyes transfixed on the horizon..

 

“Oh… my… God… It’s… it’s huge!!” the stunned driver says, “..and it’s coming ...right... for us!!”

 

 Pretty scary stuff huh? The 1985 Barrie tornado outbreak, as it was called in Canada, was the largest and most intense to ever hit the region.  The storms were part of a much larger meteorological event that stretched across much of the Eastern U.S and Canada. A total of 44 tornadoes touched down in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and Ontario.  Once the widespread damage was assessed, the pricetag in Ontario alone was... enormous… but just how enormous? Any idea?

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$200 million!  Although the financial cost was significant, the emotional cost was downright devastating.  Tragically, 12 people were killed and 281 injured in one of Ontario’s worst natural disasters.  The good news? Well remember that power outage that got everyone off work early? Well that ended up saving hundreds, if not thousands of lives! The tornado completely destroyed a number of empty factories that only 45 minutes prior, were full of workers..… and that my friends.. Is the power of love!