Did any of your ancestors suffer from trauma as a
result of a devastating natural event?
Twenty years ago, many parts of Quebec, Canada
suffered through an ice storm that knocked out power and paralyzed whole
communities. It was also felt in the neighbouring provinces of Ontario, New Brunswick
and Nova Scotia, and the US states of New York and Maine. People who were
affected still vividly remember the disaster in which 1,000 electrical
transmission towers and over 17,000 utility poles were toppled, not to mention
the millions of trees lost.
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A woman walks past a downed hydro pylon near
St-Constant, Que. after one of the worst ice storms to hit Canada struck
eastern Ontario and Quebec in January 1998; photo credit: Robert Galbraith/CP photo
(downloaded from Global
News: Looking back at the Ice Storm of 1998)
Over 3,500,000 people were without power for several
days in the coldest part of the winter season. Over 800,000 had to leave their
homes to seek relief in community shelters or to stay with family or friends. Thirty-five
Canadians died. I won’t go into detail here, but descriptions of the event and
how people coped can be found in many articles written just after the event and
more recently here: January 1998 North American ice storm; the Great Ice Storm of 1998; Looking back…
Freezing rain in the Quebec region is not uncommon.
Montreal has such events 12 to 17 times a year with between 45 and 65 total
hours of rain. Snow produced at high levels of the atmosphere drop through
warmer zones, turn to rain and then spread out over the cold ground, collecting
and freezing on every surface. On 4 January 1998, a large low-pressure system
stalled over the Great lakes and directed warm, moist air from the Gulf Coast
toward the St. Lawrence valley. A coincident high-pressure system was present
over Labrador keeping very cold air near the surface of the region. Another
strong high-pressure system was anchored over the Atlantic region preventing
migration of the two systems to the west from moving. The “perfect” conditions
resulted in several inches of rain and consequent large accumulations of ice over
80 hours.
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Map showing the accumulation of freezing rain (from Wikipedia:
January 1998 North American ice storm
Can there be any doubt that many individuals were
traumatized by this brush with a cold death?
Now a generation later, results of studies of
people involved – especially those women pregnant at the time or who gave birth
during or just after the storm – are being made public. Some of these research
projects have reached the national news: 20 years later…, Ice Storm relived…
Several Montreal-area researchers at Douglas Mental
Health University Institute and McGill University set up a study called Project Ice Storm “to study the effects of in utero exposure to
varying levels of prenatal maternal stress resulting from an independent
stressor on the children’s development from birth through childhood.”
Nearly 100 families participated in the project which followed the children
through home visits and the use of questionnaires to teachers and parents. The researchers found that the experiences of the mothers affected a whole host of things in their children: IQ, obesity, insulin secretion and their immune system.
The authors report that, “To date, we have obtained significant effects of prenatal maternal stress in every area of development that we have examined. Extrapolating our findings to more severe events, such as war and other forms of natural and man-made disaster, the strong effects we find may possibly be multiplied in other contexts.”
The authors report that, “To date, we have obtained significant effects of prenatal maternal stress in every area of development that we have examined. Extrapolating our findings to more severe events, such as war and other forms of natural and man-made disaster, the strong effects we find may possibly be multiplied in other contexts.”
The effects of the 1998 storm left lasting memories on
those who lived through it but apparently also on the DNA of children born
afterward (see 2014 article, DNA Methylation Signatures Triggered…). Data from the study have shown that “Prenatal maternal stress results in lasting,
broad and functionally organized DNA methylation signature in several tissues
in offspring. By using a natural disaster model, we can infer that the
epigenetic effect found in Project Ice Storm are due to objective levels of
hardship experienced by the pregnant woman rather than to her level of
sustained distress.” The extent of the maternal stress and impacts on the
fetuses was partly dependent on such things as the number of days without power
and the damage to the mothers’ homes.
So, I wondered, before the day of scientific, psychological
and other such confined studies of specific events, how would we know what
effects such major natural disasters might have had on our ancestors in the
past. We do have evidence that many surviving families suffered through
economic and mental problems following major floods or storms where family
members, especially the main bread-winners, were lost.
What genealogists have perhaps not recorded, or have
not been able to find, were the personal histories and states of mind of those
left behind after fathers, mothers or children were lost. Or, at least, they
may not have recognized how lives were changed or mental states developed of
those still in the womb. Following the lives of such children might show how or
whether people were affected physically or mentally by natural disasters from
which their mothers may have been subjected.
Reference:
Cao-Lei, L., Massart, R., Suderman, M. J., Machnes,
Z., Elgbeile, G., Laplante, D. P., Szyf, M. & King, S. (2014). DNA Methylation Signatures Tirggered by
Prenatal Maternal Stress Exposure to a Natural Disaster: Project Ice Storm.
Published online 19 September 2014 at https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0107653
