When Canada’s agriculture minister Lyle Vanclief stepped up to the microphone in Washington last week to thank the United States for its help during the eastern ice storm, he offered a personal example.
Although his home near Belleville, Ont. was not affected, it is on the highway between Michigan and eastern Ontario.
One Sunday evening in the midst of the storm, Vanclief said he counted 75 utility bucket trucks from Michigan sitting in a parking lot at a Belleville hotel.
“That was a steady cavalcade, convoy, you might say, from different parts of the United States,” he told a news conference Jan. 13 after a meeting with U.S. agriculture secretary Dan Glickman.
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“They had already traveled 400 miles and they had to go another 200 miles to get into the heart of the trouble.”
Vanclief used every opportunity he had to praise the Americans for their help, which included volunteers bringing equipment and generators, hydro crews traveling north, American dairies processing Canadian milk and U.S. companies supplying new utility poles to replace those snapped off under the weight of ice.
Request filled
Last week, after another appeal by Canada, 500 generators were sent to Canada from the southern United States.
The northeastern U.S. also was hit by the ice storm and Glickman said help in coping flowed both ways across the border.
“We have been working together in a kind of seamless way, without borders, to try to deal with each other’s respective problems on the ice storm,” Glickman told reporters.
