The storm has blown over and most travellers are finally getting home after a rough few days driving on icy roads and being stranded in airports.
Family and friends often greet passengers as they arrive at the J.A. Douglas McCurdy Sydney Airport, but travellers who just completed trips plagued by lengthy delays and cancellations received an especially warm welcome Tuesday.
“It was terrible,” says Joan Hillier, whose journey began Sunday in Fort McMurray, AB.
“Fifteen hours at the Toronto airport, then we got into the Halifax airport. We had nine hours before our flight was going to leave again – that is 24 hours waiting altogether.”
Traveller Adelaide MacDonald was marooned at the airport in Montreal for almost two days.
“There was a few people who got really, really upset, and there is no sense in doing that because it doesn’t get you any further ahead,” she says.
Passengers waiting to board Marine Atlantic ferries share some of the same frustrations air travellers endured in recent days, as they continue to experience delays.
The last Marine Atlantic ferry sailed from North Sydney at noon on Sunday. Half a dozen crossings have been cancelled since then, and the local terminal is jammed with tractor-trailers that have nowhere to go.
“There have been more cancellations this year than I have ever seen doing the job,” says Glenn MacDonald, whose trucking company delivers several tractor-trailer loads of dairy products and produce to Newfoundland each week.
“It only has a shelf life, so that the longer it sits on the trailer, the less time you have to get it to the store and get it sold before it’s expired and basically taken to a landfill.”
Some trailers that arrived at the terminal Saturday are still there.
High winds and heavy seas in the Cabot Strait are expected to ease tonight, which means ferry sailings could resume at midnight.
With files from CTV Atlantic's Randy MacDonald
