Wintry, stormy conditions persist into Christmas Day in parts of Canada

By The Canadian Press on December 25, 2022.

Thousands of Canadians hoping to travel for Christmas Day festivities remain stuck as winter storm conditions forced the cancellation of planes and trains and stretched into a third straight day in some areas.

A Saturday evening tweet from Via Rail announced a CN train derailment forced the carrier to cancel all trains between Toronto and Ottawa and Toronto and Montreal scheduled for Christmas Day.

It came shortly after ferocious winter weather grounded flights and stranded nine Via Rail trains between Ontario and Quebec, in some cases leaving passengers without food or water for more than 12 hours.

Meanwhile, power outages and impassable roads have prompted Ontario’s Niagara region to declare a state of emergencyand beg residents to stay off the roads.

New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador are the only provinces or territories not affected by an Environment Canada weather warning or statement as of Sunday morning.

Hydro One is reporting over 59,000 customers without power in Ontario as of early Christmas morning, while Hydro-Québec is showing over 137,000 customers in the dark and NB Power shows more than 8,700 customers affected by outages in New Brunswick.

New Brunswick grappled with one of the largest power outages to hit the province in decades on Saturday, with over 71,000 customers without power at the peak of the outage.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 25, 2022.

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