This graphic picture by Marc Apollonio reveals the extent of damage at a small apartment building on Elvina Gardens. That’s the little street that runs east of Mt. Pleasant Rd. one block north of Broadway Ave. The place was apparently vacant because of the the power failure. The fire department was summoned about 5.30 a.m. Boxing Day to what became a two-alarm fire. There were no injuries.

The twinkling porch lights tell it all. Throughout Moore Park, Bennington Heights and along Leaside’s signature drive named Bessborough, furnaces are on and families can do some short-term planning for Christmas morning. Most people have had elaborate plans washed out by the ice storm and its nasty aftermath. A Lawrence Park woman who took temporary refuge at the Roehampton Best Western spoke with sadness about a family reunion at her cottage which will not happen. Modern homes still have endless tasks left to clean up. Cars smashed by branches, the actual edibility of food in the fridge, restoring all the electronic utilities to more or less normal. But for the uniquely blessed residents of this part of Canada, an important corner has been turned. There are still pockets of darkness in South Bayview and our minds can never be at rest as long as vast numbers of Torontonians in the west end and Scarborough continue to labour under freezing conditions. Hope is real however as Hydro reports the diminishing number of those without power — down to 115,000 metered households or businesses — and that dozens of skilled crews from as far away at Manitoba are trucking to Toronto right now to help out. Some are already at work.

The lights are back on along South Bayview. Stores and shops are open Monday and there was a good number of people on the street by noon. Tzatz, the women’s wear store has a hastily made sign in the window saying WE ARE OPEN.  Toronto Hydro said that Sunnybrook Hospital would have primary power restored by today. The key health sciences centre has been operating on back up generators since early Sunday. But thousands of South Bayview homes face a dark and cold pre-Christmas. Inset, one lucky homeowner can bundle the family around a gas fireplace. On the Run at Mt Pleasant and Merton Street was definitely idle and bottom inset, a branch weighs heavily on a power line into a home in Moore Park. It may yet cause an outage. On Mt Pleasant Rd. things are still a bit rocky although stores are open even if they don’t have power. Traffic is confused because of traffic light outages all up the street to Mt Pleasant and Manor Rd. Traffic signals are back in operation at Bayview and Millwood and Bayview and Manor Rd. At a news conference this morning Anthony Haines, CEO of Toronto Hydro, revised the estimate of customers still without power to about 215,000. This he said represented “metres” not individuals. Generally, a metre might be considered a household or business. Mr. Haines said that critical services such as Sunnybrook and East General Hospital, and the two Toronto pumping stations, have been re-connected to the Hydro grid. He also noted that the next priority for Hydro is the so-called “big feeders” which had failed. They are sources of electrical power to neighborhoods. The repair of one feeder would immediately bring many households back on line. Mr Haines said the last priority are the unfortunate people who have lost power to single houses, or to just a few, in a neighborhood where there is still power. This has typically been caused by a branch bringing down a line into a home, leaving the service next door untouched. In some cases it may take until the end of the week to see all these single cases fixed.