GODERICH, Ontario - In the days after a category-F3 tornado left a path of crumbling buildings, overturned vehicles and uprooted trees in Goderich, Ont., affected residents had their hands full -- clearing roads, salvaging belongings and attending to basic needs like finding food and running water.
Now that the power is back on and most homeowners know whether their houses will be saved or demolished, residents have turned their attention to a new set of problems. Those who lost homes need places to live, employees of destroyed businesses need new forms of income, and almost everyone in the shell-shocked town of 8,000 is still grappling with the reality that their picturesque community has been drastically altered.
Signs of the storm are visible throughout the town, but nowhere is it more pronounced than its historic, octagonal square. Many of the buildings are missing chunks or visibly crumbling and almost all of the interior park's centuries-old trees were completely uprooted.
"It will never be the same," said farmer Gary Hewitt, who lives about 10 kilometres from town. "It's hard to accept."
Goderich's bustling commercial district, the Square has been cordoned off for more than a week, with its residents and business-owners evacuated and unsure when they'll be able to return. Dianne Colgan, the morning newscaster at Goderich radio station The Beach, estimated at least 20 residents were displaced from the Square.
Employees at the Sifto salt mine, the town's largest industrial employer, are also out of work due to the massive damage to the mine's above-ground facilities. Located within sight of one of the town's formerly bustling beaches, the mine was also the site of the tornado's only fatality. Normand Laberge, a 61-year-old employee from nearby Lucknow, died on the job while operating a boom that loads salt into ships.
Goderich's hardest-hit residential neighbourhood lies just east of the Square, where at least 13 homes have been declared structurally unsound and will have to be rebuilt. Dozens more will require significant reconstruction; their roofs covered in tarps, doors missing and windows shattered.
The one sizable business in that neighbourhood is a lumber yard, where haphazard piles of sticks and debris have replaced neatly stacked rows of two-by-fours. A mangled delivery truck sits out front and a sign on the business' office door reads "Closed."
Many in the neighbourhood have taken spray paint to the exterior walls of the condemned houses to thank the community for its support. The Purser-Hessel family home reads "What, me worry?", followed by "Thanks to all." Another, the home of 30-year-old Vanessa Yeats, says "Goderich loves Nessie," and "So much thanks and love, Ness."
"On my entire block, I don't think there's a house that will survive," Yeats said, as she recovered her few remaining possessions from the basement of a nearby house slated for demolition. "Everything's OK with me, other than the severe trauma of the event itself, and the trauma of losing a house that I love."
'Gawkers go home'
The scale of the destruction is hard to comprehend and has attracted near-constant visits from outsiders curious to see the flattened neighbourhood. Last week, most drivers on Yeats' block came with food, coffee or help for the affected homeowners. Now, much of the traffic comes from slow-moving vehicles, their drivers' mouths open wide as they watch the tornado survivors clean up their properties. In a town without a rush hour, the constant vehicle traffic has become tiresome for many in the neighbourhood.
After taking her salvaged belongings to a friend's house last weekend, Yeats returned home to find a sign erected on her lawn, reading "Gawkers go home!! (You still have one!!)." Much to her neighbour's disappointment, she took it down, throwing it into her condemned house through a busted window.
"I don't want to be represented that way... Everyone's been so great," she said, later adding, "But there have been a lot of people just driving around and gawking."
Yeats was already planning a move to Toronto before the tornado, but for other displaced Goderich residents, finding a place to live in the small town won't be easy.
"There are so many people in this... position," said Yeats, whose roommate plans to stay in Goderich and has been bouncing around between temporary accommodations. "There's not going to be any houses to rent."
The town has set up a Facebook group to act as a central location for vacancy postings, but those seeking homes on the page far outweigh those offering them. While many in the Lake Huron community offered up short-term stays in cottages and rooms for tornado "refugees," finding longer-term accommodation is proving much more difficult for many displaced residents.
About 1,000 people attended a community meeting in the local arena on Saturday, the first town-wide gathering since the disaster. Before it started, residents shared stories and embraces -- if they hadn't been directly affected, they all seemed to know someone who had. The entire community had spent the week absorbed in the relief effort, including Victim Services executive director Shelley Dorey, who lost her house in the tornado but went back to work almost immediately.
"I had to keep my mind busy," she told the sympathetic crowd in tears, later earning a standing ovation.
Elaborating on her organization's mandate, she encouraged anyone in town who needs to talk to visit Victim Services for help.
"Emotional support is one of the most critical elements of the healing process," she said.
In addition to the social services available for affected residents, financial help is also on the way. Short-term emergency grants were available the week after the storm, insurance is covering new homes for many who lost them, and people who still require compensation will be eligible for funding under the Ontario Disaster Relief Assistance Program. The province has so far contributed $5 million to the reconstruction fund, which is also accepting private donations that will be matched two-to-one by the provincial government.
Bruce Power, which operates the nuclear plant further north along Lake Huron, donated $180,000 to the effort, and is encouraging the town to use some of that money to buy new mature trees. Mayor Deb Shewfelt has said he'd like trees back in the Square in time for the Festival of Lights, held just before the Christmas holidays, but hasn't given an indication of when the downtown will be fully open for business.
From her position as a local reporter, Colgan says the biggest challenge facing the town now will be co-ordinating the reconstruction efforts and making sure everyone is on the same page.
"The town is obviously doing what they can on the official side of things, and the people are kind of doing their own thing to help out but there are some issues (it seems) getting everyone... firing on all the same cylinders," she wrote in an email. "I think council needs to keep the public more informed and on track with what is happening and still needs to be done."
Meanwhile, Shewfelt is promising the community formerly known as "Canada's Prettiest Town" will emerge as "Canada's Prettiest and Strongest Town."
"The Grand Old Lady's heart may have been ripped out," the town's website proclaims, "but in our hands it is beating stronger than ever!"
Saira Peesker lives in Toronto, but grew up in Goderich and visits often. She knows many of the individuals featured in this article.
