Cruel chance seems to have condemned many Toronto homeowners to live on a street with no power on Christmas Eve while a street one block away has had electricity returned 12 hours earlier. That’s the way it is just north of Lawrence where streets like Woburn Ave and Bedford Park Ave remain in the dark since Sunday. One block north, on Cranbrooke Ave., power came back this morning. “I feel we’ve been touched by the finger of God,” said one woman resident of Cranbrooke. Two blocks south on Bedford Park, a homeowner was tweeting a plaintiff request for information about how soon he would have power. Many are familiar by now with the so-called “one-off” customers who are victims of a branch or tree that has taken out power to their home. But in this quadrant north-west of Lawrence and Avenue Rd, the streets reveal a pattern that looks like slats of Venetion blind — on, off, on, off. Who knows why? It is part of the bad luck suffered by hundreds of thousands in Toronto who have had to live in freezing conditions. It’s just that some are having more bad luck than others.
