By Nancy Willis
NORTH LAKE – Margie Grant (Fraser), a well-known eastern Island gourmet chef and writer, was on her own in a little old cook shack at North Lake Harbour Thursday during one of the worst storms in memory.
Not only was Grant alone in the howling storm, but she was completely trapped in the building where snow came whirling in off the sea and blocked all windows and doors.
Last summer, she renovated the original cook shack used by fishermen at North Lake 50 years ago into a cozy little eating place once again.
Complete with wood stove, candles and books, she opted to spend the winter there but woke up Thursday morning wondering if she should have reconsidered.
“What I am most worried about today (Thursday) is the storm surge they are predicting, because if that overflowed the wharf, or carried its two- feet-thick ice sheets across the dune, it would come right through the wall of the shack,” she said.
One fisherman arrived in the early morning to clear snow from the door but within minutes it was solidly blocked again.
“If I had to get out of here now, I couldn’t,” she said in a telephone interview during the afternoon.
Grant was in touch with Emergency Measures Organization during the day. They told her they didn’t think the surge will go over three feet in Souris.
The EMO people said they would be checking on her as the surge neared its peak and for her to call 911 immediately if something happened.
But Grant told them by the time something did occur it wouldn’t do her much good because she would be hanging off the light fixture by then.
“So I am a little worried about that,” she said.
When she realized she was trapped inside the shack, there was only one window on the north side that she could see anything out of. It is a little window high up in the wall, that looks out on the ocean and to another little abandoned shack a few feet away. A little bird took up residence there a few weeks ago and Grant has been feeding it since.
“When I looked out, there the little bird is in the window of his shack looking at me and I am looking at him, and it is all I can see,” she said.
The fisherman said he would come over after things died down and help her get out again, but in the meantime Grant described herself as a cave dweller.
Until then she planned to curl up, read and maybe go in and cook to ease the boredom.
Contacted by The Guardian at 7:30 p.m., Grant said that all was well as far as the storm surge was concerned, although the visibility outside her small home had not improved.
© 2004 The Guardian (Charlottetown). All rights reserved.
