Hurricane Fiona

Devastation in Port aux Basques is ‘unbelievable.’

About 97,000 still without power across NS and PEI six days after Fiona.

More than half the fishing ports in Fiona’s path damaged.

Fiona reshaped PEI’s coastlines.

Those are just some of the headlines a week after Fiona slammed into Atlantic Canada. The hurricane will likely be rated as one of Canada’s worst natural disasters — the pictures and stories coming out of Port aux Basques in Newfoundland are heart-breaking.

You can be sure I was paying close attention to the storm’s track as it headed for the same place where I’d spent a week last August. Thankfully, my friends in the Annapolis Valley came through the storm just fine. They had lots of wind and rain and some power losses, but the west side of Nova Scotia is pretty much unscathed.

Family who were travelling on Cape Breton Island rejigged their plans and headed inland to get out of the storm’s path, then hunkered down in a hotel with a supply of storm chips. They too were safe.

Only a week after Fiona, photos of Ian’s destruction on the Gulf Coast of Florida — where I spent New Year’s some years ago with the same Nova Scotian friends — are dominating the news. The Carolinas, where I spent a month as a student many decades ago, are now waiting for Ian’s impact.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d wonder if I was the common link to all this hurricane activity.

Here is a photo I took last summer in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. I figure the ocean-facing chairs are as good a metaphor as any for storm watching.