It has been 20 years since the big blackout of 2003 that saw 50 million people in Ontario and the northeastern United States lose power.
Many people who were in Ontario at the time will remember August 14th, 2003 for the ordinary citizens volunteering to direct traffic with no signals to guide drivers, and for the neighbours barbecuing and sharing fridge clean-out meals by candlelight.
But Todd Parcey remembers it for the 30,000 alarms that started sounding in the control room of the Independent Electricity System Operator at 4:11 p-m.
Parcey was a system supervisor at the time and says it sounded like a casino floor, only each individual sound signalled a problem.
Failures in Ohio's electrical grid triggered North America's worst blackout, but at the time Parcey and his team didn't know that -- they just set about restoring Ontario's power.
He says his role is like an air traffic controller for electricity, and all day his team was on the phone with power generators and transmitters, co-ordinating restoration one baby step at a time.
The grid itself was restored by midnight, and most customers had their lights back on the next day, but the blackout had still caused a net loss of 18.9 million work hours, and a drop of 2.3 billion dollars in manufacturing shipments in Ontario.