17,500 customers still without power after Ontario ice storm: Hydro One

A heavily damaged pavilion from the ice storm at the Sunnidale Park Arboretum in Barrie, Ont. on Friday April 4, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christopher Drost

Some 17,500 customers are still without electricity more than a week after a powerful spring storm encrusted parts of central and eastern Ontario with ice.

Hydro One’s outage map shows most of those are in the Peterborough and Georgian Bay areas, both hard hit by the March 30 ice storm.

The utility said in an update early Tuesday evening that it expected power to be restored to most residential customers by the end of the week, except for those needing inspections by the Electrical Safety Authority due to damage.

At the time, it said about half of those still without power were secondary properties, most of them unoccupied.

More than a million homes and businesses in the provinces experienced outages due to the storm.

Windy, rainy weather hampered restoration efforts in the days that followed.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 9, 2025.