Boissevain, Man. acquired a reputation as the town without food, after a record blizzard paralyzed the southwestern corner of the province and parts of eastern Saskatchewan last week.
“We ran out of milk Friday and then potatoes and bread shortly after that,” said David Wowk, grocery manager at the Boissevain Co-op. The store was still waiting for suppliers to arrive Monday to restock bare shelves.
“People were pretty understanding. They could see that the trucks couldn’t get in.”
And for the most part, residents couldn’t get out. Boissevain and Melita co-op stores delivered groceries to blizzard shut-ins throughout the weekend as the storm dumped up to 80 centimetres of snow on some parts of the region.
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Record amount
Environment Canada climatologist Brian Fehr said 81 cm for Boissevain and 75 for Virden are record snowfalls in a one or two-day period for this time of year.
And as Boissevain residents went without milk, some nearby dairy producers who count on pick-ups every second day were forced to dump milk because transport trucks couldn’t travel the roads.
“It’s like a great big snowball. The longer you wait between pick-ups, the bigger the snowball gets,” said Jim Wade, manager of the Manitoba Milk Producers.
“If you miss a day you have to do all of the province’s 767 producers in one go and that’s impossible to do,” Wade said.
About 800,000 litres of milk are produced daily in Manitoba. Wade said close to 50 producers were forced to dump at least two days of milk during the storm.
“It wasn’t major amounts that would disrupt store supply, but producers will be directly affected in their income for that milk,” he added.
Two of the province’s seven milk processing plants were closed because staff couldn’t make it to work. Brandon and Souris plants are now running.
Wade said: “As much as we like to organize everything, when Mother Nature decides to throw a curve ball there’s nothing you can do except swing.”