electricity outage

The south island had a power outage last night. For about 2 hours, people had to make do with what they could, light candles and a fire and eat what was ready (or find a restaurant, like we did). So now some people think that our island, which is on a seismic (?) fault lign, should be home to a nuclear power plant... Crazy canadians!
What this has taught me, however, is that we aren't prepared for power outages in our house. No flashlights, no food eadible without cooking, no wood to build a fire for heat, almost no matches...
So today, since the power's back and therefore the stores are opened, I'm going to go and get some of these things. I hope we get a repeat performance soon!
Interestingly, I met more of my neighbours yesterday during that outage than in the whole year I've lived in our house.