I am writing this on Thursday, October 2, in the warm glow of candlelight which is not actually as pleasant as it sounds. It is now four days since Hurricane Juan made his aggressive way through Halifax, central Nova Scotia and parts of Prince Edward Island. Life has not returned to normal for many thousands of people and for some affected areas, it will not be “back to normal” for many years to come.

On the street where I live, enormous 100-year-old trees have been torn up by the roots, taking large chunks of street and sidewalk with them. Some of them lean precariously on neighbours’ houses. Some of them are entangled with power lines which came down with them. Our electricity went off just before midnight last Sunday and has not yet been restored.

This is an inconvenience — no lights, no hot water, no computers or television, no telephones — but I acknowledge that an inconvenience is all it is, compared to what many people are going through.

Certainly, farmers and fishermen have — indefinitely — lost their means of livelihood. Two people have died as a direct result of the storm; others have since died in a house fire where the smoke alarms were wired into the electrical system — and the power was off. Many families had windows shatter out of their houses or roofs blown off or other damage which has made their homes uninhabitable.

The Public Gardens, the heart and soul of downtown Halifax, have been devastated as the storm ripped out exotic trees and shrubs and plants that have been carefully and professionally nurtured for generations. Point Pleasant Park, the urban forest at the end of Halifax’s peninsula, dotted with fortifications and historic sites that are hundreds of years old — and the magical setting for Shakespeare-by-the-sea — now resembles a clear-cut.

Those are some of the sad results in the aftermath of the storm. I try to remind myself of all this when I get irritated and impatient — as I do. Candlelight dinners are less appealing when they’re compulsory; cold showers are no fun; trying to cook some of the food before it spoils and then find a home for it when there’s no refrigeration can be frustrating; consigning the unsalvageable to the compost is just plain annoying.

I’m irritated by something else too. I’m tired of seeing and hearing story after story in the mainstream media about how this has brought communities and neighbourhoods together. “People are helping each other,” the stories say. “We’re all out in the streets, looking out for our neighbours, seeing how we can help,” other stories say.

I had to do a little self-analysis, to see why this makes me so irritable. I suppose it should be obvious: why does it take such a dramatic and destructive event to bring communities together? What has caused the erosion of our communities to the point that they require a crisis to be mended?

For the past several years, our political culture has pulled us away from the idea of community, of caring for one another on a daily basis. Too many people have been hoodwinked into voting for tax cuts and private services. In too many cases, they have rejected the party that wishes to raise the minimum wage, to increase rates of social assistance, to provide affordable housing, to come together in support of those who need it most in our society.

Where will all the people extolling “community” be, the next time they’re asked to care for a neighbour — when that neighbour may be someone more abstract than the person who lives on the same leafy block?

As people in Ontario went to the polls, it would be nice to think that voters were thinking about their communities and their neighbours and their larger society and were as willing to work toward that on election day as they would be in the midst of a crisis.

And as people in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island continue their clean-up, it would be encouraging to think that their sense of community spirit and support might live on.