15Oct05 - Our first trip to Canada, the flood of 2005 (aka how I spent all night running sump pumps)

The first picture is the view from Rayne's aunt's cottage north of Toronto.

This is a photo of a park bench in Goodwin Park (just across the street) which is not usually in the middle of the pond!


Well we went for our first foray to Canada since we moved here in July. Apparently if we plan to become non-residents (and thus pay only US taxes) this is something we can't do too often. The drive from Wethersfield took about 8 1/2 hours including a few stops for the dogs along the way. When we arrived it was nice to see Rayne's aunt Pat and one of her cousins (Reed) and his son (Tyler).

The dogs had a great time as soon as we got there, playing with a border collie next door, digging in the sand and swimming in the lake. Pat cooked a prime rib for dinner to go with the wine that we brought with us from our stop in Marmora. We spent the evening at the neighbours house watching hockey night in Canada with a houseful! Oh it's nice to be in Canada again!

The next few days were spent relaxing, eating turkey (the next eveings dinner) and watching movies. We chatted about the cottage and all the changes Pat was making (she sold her house and is moving to the cottage full time) and reminisced about previous visits. The dogs got plenty of long walks in the woods and enjoyed the view of the lake from the enclosed deck.

On Wednesday we headed for home. We arrived in Wethersfield to the same weather that we left, rain. In fact since we had left on Saturday it had rained every day in Connecticut. We spent Thursday hanging out, grocery shopping and watching more movies (hey it was raining). Friday night came and we had a Ham for dinner and settled in to watch the Canucks play hockey. Around 10:00pm I went downstairs to check the basement since for the last couple of days the rain had been pretty constant. Sure enough in the lowest corner of the basement there was a rather large puddle starting to form. I decided to go to the neighbours house to see if they were flooding or if it was just us.

My neighbour Hector met me at the door. I told him that we had started to get some water in the basement and asked him how his place was. He said his place was fine but we decided to look anyway. Where we had a large puddle Hector's entire basement had 3 inches of water. I immediately went back home and called the landlord to see if he had a sump pump.

The landlord Joe, showed up at 10:30 with a small pump. We hooked it up and started to get the water out. Unfortunately the rain continued and got even heavier. The pump alone wasn't going to be enough. Joe wasn't sure it was going to be a big problem so I convinced him to go to Hector's house and check it out. We arrived to find Hector now had 8 inches of water in his basement and stuff floating everywhere.

Joe decided to go find another pump and I went home to check on the pump and get all our things up off the ground in case we weren't able to keep the water at bay. When Joe returned he had another pump but it needed to be submersed in water or it would overheat and stop working. As luck would have it the flodding started to get alot worse and the nastiest spot was the downstairs toilet. We stuck the one pump in the toilet and the other pump in the laundry room. The only problem was the pump in the toilet would drain the toilet then overheat and quit working. After some time we just started unplugging the pump every minute or so, letting the toilet fill up (30 seconds) and then plug the pump back in. This went on from 11:30pm until 7:30am the next morning.

I set up chairs and Joe and I sat and watched TV, drank some wine and marvelled at how much water was coming in. At one point we walked outside to look at the road and noticed that the pond on the golf course across the street had now swollen so much that it was now even with the road. Joe, who has been a longtime resident of the area was amazed. In the past 8 days the area had received over 12 inches of rain. Joe went out in the morning and bought an expandable plug and we removed the toilet and plugged the out take to stop the water coming in.

Finally the rain subsided later in the morning so Joe went home and I went to bed to get some rest. We were able to stop the damage to our place but the neighbours up and down the street have been devestated. Luckily (or not really), the flooding was caused by the sewers backing up (yuck!) and so people should be able to get their things replaced and fixed without having to have flood insurance.

So let's check the score here now.....the hottest summer on record with 29 days of 90+ weather, a flood that many have said is a once in 50 year event, gee I can hardly wait for winter!

Ciao for Now!

Kevin and Rayne