Montrealers spend Passover without power

“What it’s done, it’s really brought communities together and created people to find solutions,” said Jewish Montrealer Katherine Korakakis.

Power or no power, Jewish Montrealers are celebrating Passover in any way they can as hundreds of thousands of Quebec homes are still without power.

“We were in the middle of cooking, actually, and everything was like getting ready. Supposed to have my parents over as well, and we lost power, so we kind of left the stove on to keep the heat on, but when we served dinner, we noticed that a lot of the things is not cooked. So we just took the top layer, and it was cooked, basically. So it was an interesting Passover,” said Jewish Montrealer Itsik Romano.

Katherine Korakakis lucked out to still have power following the ice storm on Wednesday but her brother on the other hand wasn’t as lucky

“Because there was no electricity to pump the pumps out, the water stopped working, so the entire house flooded and there’s no electricity. So we were supposed to go there tonight. So now scrambling, trying to find another place. We found something, but, you know, just piecemealing stuff together. Yeah, it’s been wild. It’s been wild,” said Korakakis.

“We were supposed to go to my parents, my parents in law house, and they don’t have the power they’re living in Ville Saint-Laurent, so they kind of cancel it as well. And our car actually doesn’t have enough guys to even go to do a single out for me. And I just took a drive this morning and I saw that there’s no gas station that’s operating and there’s a couple of them that operates towards the highway and they were full. So I’m like, ok, there’s no way we will have to stand in our by at least an hour. So we said, you know what, forget about this today. We’re just going to do with what we can,” said Romano.

“Passover is a celebration of the liberation of the Jewish people of Egypt. So we commemorate the exodus of Egypt. And what’s interesting about it is one of the what’s funny and coincidental is that there’s ten plagues that fell upon the the Egyptians, ok? And two of them were hail and darkness. So we were like we survived the plague,” said Korakakis.

Many having to cancel Seder dinner or get creative.

“Meal preparation that makes it a little bit more tricky. I know that a lot of our friends and family have been very creative. They’ve taken out their camping gear and are warming stuff up by propane, to be quite honest. Yeah. And then or just grabbing the stuff that they’ve made and going to a friend’s house that happens to have power,” said Korakakis.

One person on Facebook saying they moved their Seder to their siblings house while another said they still didn’t have power and had to cancel.

“People just eating really just cold food that I heard a lot about. Candle lit, you know, just eating with with cold food, with candles. I’ve seen pictures of people with flashlights eating all kinds of funny things like this. And then of course, people just saying, well, you know what? You know, we can’t our food was frozen. We can’t have that. We’re going to have something else. We’ll have our months. Because really the obligation is to have the matzah and that’s the the obligation to eat a certain amount of matzah. And then, of course, read the the Haggadah, which is the story of the exodus. So, you know, if you’re doing that, then you’ve fulfilled your obligation,” said Korakakis.