Fiona causes Kleefeld couple to race for safety

Taking a trip to the east coast of Canada has been on Walter and Beverly Toews’ bucket list for many years. However, three weeks and 8,000kms into their adventure things turned out very different than they had planned.  

Downgraded from a hurricane, Tropical Storm Fiona made landfall last Friday with torrential rain and winds up to 160km/h causing trees to uproot and power outages across three eastern provinces.  

Toews recalls where they were when they first heard the news of the impending arrival of Fiona.  

“We were around Deer Lake, Newfoundland. We had just driven down from Flower’s Cove where the ferry crosses from Newfoundland to Labrador and were stopping to have lunch. So, there's virtually no reception anywhere (on the island) but then of all things, as we were having lunch, I chose to open up my cellphone. And there in bold letters on my cellphone it said, “Ferries are cancelled for the weekend. The weather is horrendous. Fiona is upon us.” We hadn't heard anything about it till then. So we stayed there a little longer, because we had cellphone reception in that area, and we were able to get through to someone on the mainland and make other travel arrangements heading over to Nova Scotia.”  

Toews says their goal initially was to make their way to Sydney, but that was now out of the question because the northeast point of Nova Scotia was in the direct path of Fiona. Now they decided it was best to drive as far west into the province as possible, as fast as possible and away from the storm, which is what they did. They left Newfoundland Thursday night (September 22) and took an 8-hour ferry ride to get to North Sydney.  

The path Walter and Bev took to get as far away from the storm as possible. 

“After the ferry landed, we drove as far as Amherst, Nova Scotia, which was a good 4-hour drive away (from Sydney). Even there the storm hit us and we were without power and experienced winds exceeding 100K an hour at the hotel.” 

Toews says they had planned to stay in Sydney, but it turns out the waves between Sydney and Newfoundland were between 30ft and 40ft high when Fiona hit the shores of Nova Scotia Saturday morning with wind gusts up to 140 kms per hour. Toews says that city is now a disaster area.

Meanwhile, in Amherst they were without power for 24 hours and “it was just really, really windy. We did not sleep in the RV Friday night but in the hotel room. But even in there the wind was very noisy. And then when we went outside on Saturday we saw an amazing number of downed trees everywhere. At one point, they had one lane open. We had to go around the trees but the top of our RV was still hitting trees, and there was still a detour because there were still power lines on the road and these were supposedly open roads. So, with the wind and the howling and how it was rocking the RV, you know, we definitely won’t forget that experience very soon.”

Downed trees on hydro lines, partially blocking the highway the Toews' were taking on Sunday.

By Monday the couple had made their way to the south-central part of Nova Scotia. Toews says,  

“As we drove further along the coast to the southern part, we saw less and less damage all the time but at Truro, N.S., where we turned off the highway, to go south, there they had 6 inches of rain in a real hurry. There were places where, you know, most of the trees beside the road were down. Lots of really large trees. The locals said some of that was also because it had been raining for the last two weeks and the soil was so moist that when the wind hit, they had a double whammy, and bang! All of a sudden the trees just couldn't sustain any sort of wind pressure at all.” 

As to how they managed emotionally through the storm, Toews says “We’ve got a good group of prayer supporting friends and family at home and although our original plans were altered, the new plans were definitely the right ones, and so we’re definitely grateful.”  

All photos were taken by Walter Toews. The sunset photo was taken Monday, September 26th.