iCal calendar archive

I have been using iCal since OS 10.1 and frequently need to reference events far in the past ie: vacation dates, medical exam dates and the like. I needed to find a long past (5 years) medical exam date and to my chagrin, I found that with the introduction of iCloud all my data seems to have evaporated. This is a diaster of the first order!!!

What has changed that Apple sees fit to erase old data? Don't they understand that many of us rely on such calendars to retrieve past information now that things like Day Timers® have gone out of style and things are done electronically. I don't imagine that there is much that I can do to recover my old data but I would like to be assured that it won't happen in the future. And, yes, I back up on a regular basis but I certainly don't have any backups 5 years old.

Thanks for any input