Thursday's weather made a complete hash out of Halloween night for area children. Both Ottawa and Montreal were in for some really wild weather. There was forceful winds gusting up to 80 km/hr and endless downpours. We had been able to get out briefly in the early daytime hours under threatening skies, but the wind was pretty high then too, and danger lurks in a forest with such strong wind gusts.

Jackie and Jillie don't much like the sound of roaring wind gusting through the forest canopy. It's not the swaying masts of trees clacking against one another that disturbs then, it's the locomotive-level, dense sound of the wind high above that alerts them to something quite unusual happening that they don't understand and therefore fear.

We had read that parts of Montreal had declared they would cancel out Thursday night for trick-or-treating, and children would be invited to go out on Friday when the weather was expected to improve somewhat, as a precautionary measure to ensure safety on the dark, wet streets with rain pouring down and wind blasting everywhere.

That didn't happen in Ottawa. Halloween was on for Thursday night. We decided to have dinner a little earlier than usual, to try to beat the rush at the door. Surprisingly, we had our salad without interruption, then our fish and (oven-baked) chips, and finally our mango dessert and not once did the doorbell ring. When we were finishing up our tea, that's when the first of the excited and costumed children finally came around.

My husband was prepared for them. All the little chocolate bars had been poured into a huge bowl and sat awaiting their arrival and treat-disbursement. He sat on one of the bottom stairs, a book handy to keep him entertained between rushes, and from six until eight he manned the barricades. Mostly they arrived in little crowds, a familiar spectacle to my husband whose 'job' it is to greet Halloweeners at the door. He always does. We usually have about a hundred children come to ring the bell or knock on the storm door; the other door wide open, porch lights blazing.

Last night there was half that number that determinedly came out, defying the wind and the rain, hauling their utterly soaked pillowslips full of goodies. One man was dressed as a drenched lion with a long dangling tail, his 3-year-old son perched on his soldiers dressed as a lion cub, the child's head bobbing down as he kept falling asleep.

Some mothers accompanied their children to the porch and sternly reminded them to say 'thank you!' if excitement at the event stole their manners. But as my husband informed me later he's never seen so many well-behaved and courteous children, of all ages, who shyly spoke the magical 'trick or treat!', and immediately followed up with a shy-sounding 'thank you!', departing to the next house.


That everyone who went out got thoroughly soaked was an understatement.

I ventured out for the briefest of moments later, around half-past nine with Jackie and the rain had almost stopped but the wind remained, snarling through the atmosphere. And this morning again when I went out with him, the wind was whipping trees back and forth, but instead of rain what was falling was sleet, in reflection of the cold temperature higher in the atmosphere, but around 3C at street level.