At 12:10 a.m. on Monday, September 29, 2003, the worst storm to hit Nova Scotia in more than a century made landfall near Shad Bay. It took a few hours for hurricane Juan to tear across the province, but it left a trail of devastation in its wake. Juan killed two people, leveled homes, ripped apart the province’s electricity grid and turned forests into splinters. It carried a terrible punch—winds gusted up to 175 kilometres per hour—and it has left a mark that won’t soon be erased. The reporters and photographers of The Chronicle-Herald documented the storm, the damage, the tragedies, the struggle to cop and the recovery effort. The paper served as a vital lifeline to the hundreds of thousands of Nova Scotians without power. This book—the story of Juan—is built around the best of that coverage.

Stephen Maher has been writing about Canadian politics since 1989. As a columnist and investigative reporter for Postmedia News, iPolitics, and Maclean’s, he has often set the agenda on Parliament Hill, covering political corruption, electoral wrongdoing, misinformation, and human rights abuses. He has also won many awards, including the Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University, the Michener Award for meritorious public service journalism, the National Newspaper Award, two Canadian Association of Journalism Awards, a Canadian Hillman Prize, and has been nominated for several National Magazine Awards.

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