To the editor,
After reading the story, “Christmas blizzard worst since 1999” in the Jan. 19 issue of the Banner, written by Melissa Dunphy, my mind would not let me rest until I wrote to you about the 1947 storm.
It began Monday night and never let up until late Saturday afternoon, and it blew steady, day and night. Often we couldn’t see our barn or trees along our lane. At 8:30 a.m. Tuesday morning, two carloads of students from Moorefield, who were stuck near our farm on the 10th of Wallace, three miles from Palmerston, arrived at our door, 11 in all.
They were cold from pushing and shoveling – to no avail, so after they warmed up, six boys walked through fields to the next farm home. The five stayed with us, 10 around the table, three meals a day – our family of five, and two ladies (teachers) and three boys in Grade 12, until Saturday night. I was in Grade 13 at that time. My mother baked nearly every day to feed us all, and the only thing we ran out of was sugar, but we had lots of five-pound tins of honey for coffee, cereal and baking. The boys helped Dad with chores, and the four of them played euchre every night, and sometimes six-handed if the two ladies wished to play.
It was Saturday night when plows got out to clear roads, and it was Monday before my parents could go into Palmerston to replenish the pantry, and get meat from our locker at the Creamery, later owned by your grandparents, Mike (Wilson). I knew them well.
The snow banks were so high that year, that we walked on one, over top of the fence, to the barn, thus not having to open the gate below. In many places, snow plows made banks along the road as high as the telephone wires.
I am not belittling storms we’ve had over the years, and this one in 2022 was terrible because it wrecked so many people’s Christmas plans. We live in Ontario and we’ll have lots of storms!
Phyllis Thompson
Listowel
