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    Hurricane Hazel: Canada's Storm of the Century
    Hurricane Hazel: Canada's Storm of the Century
    Hurricane Hazel: Canada's Storm of the Century
    Ebook154 pages1 hour

    Hurricane Hazel: Canada's Storm of the Century

    By James Gifford and Mike Filey

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    About this ebook

    On October 15, 1954, Hurricane Hazel battered southern Ontario, leaving in its wake a terrible toll: thousands homeless, million in property damage, and, worst of all, 81 people dead. Hazel destroyed bridges, submerged towns, and drowned unsuspecting Ontarians in their homes and cars. Raymore Drive in Weston was decimated when the Humber River swelled by eight feet, taking the lives of 32 residents in only one hour. In Etobicoke, five volunteer firemen drowned while trying to reach marooned motorists. Towns and villages from Toronto north to Timmins felt Hazel’s fury.

    After the storm, people walked the now-surreal streets of their towns: cars upside-down and wrapped in power lines, iceboxes and dead cows hanging from trees, houses flattened, toys and furniture floating down the street.

    On the 50th anniversary of the storm, Jim Gifford has captured that fatal night in the voices of those who survived it, from residents who lived along the surging Humber River to a policeman who rescued families from their rooftops to firemen and Boy Scouts who searched for victims along the riverbanks. Including more than 100 never-before-published photographs, Hurricane Hazel: Canada’s Storm of the Century documents one of the worst natural disasters in Canadian history.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDundurn
    Release dateAug 3, 2004
    ISBN9781459712591
    Hurricane Hazel: Canada's Storm of the Century

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      Book preview

      Hurricane Hazel - James Gifford

      GIFFORD

      HURRICANE HAZEL

      IN OCTOBER 1954, TORONTO WAS A SMALL TOWN. The population had crept up to over a million inhabitants, and families trucked in from across Canada and around the world. Industry boomed. New streets lined with new houses sprouted up everywhere, revitalizing the sleepy suburbs that wrapped around the city’s core, connecting them. But for all its growth, Toronto was still a small town.

      Long before the CN Tower loomed over the skyline, Toronto was a city of independent neighbourhoods and communities: East York, Weston, Willowdale, Leaside, Don Mills, Royal York, Humber Summit, Lansing, Long Branch, Swansea. Now they have all been swallowed up by amalgamation; the names remaining on road signs identify what were once small villages nestled within a cosmopolitan collective.

      In 1954 people knew their neighbours. In the summer, they talked over their back fences and shouted greetings across the street over the squeals of children playing. It was a time when neighbours really did drop by for a cup of sugar, and when someone needed help with something, you gave it.

      The Yonge subway line had opened in March of that year. Passengers rattled along, one arm gripping a strap for balance, the other holding a folded Toronto Telegram, or perhaps the Toronto Daily Star, as they journeyed to their jobs at Eaton’s at Yonge and College or at the banks farther south or in the growing number of specialty shops and businesses. Television was just becoming affordable for many. When the Toronto Argonauts played against the Ottawa Rough Riders in the first televised football game in Canada in September, most viewers were treated to their first Canadian Football League game. But when Marilyn Bell swam successfully across Lake Ontario, most still heard about it on the radio or read about it in the newspaper.

      Martin Taylor

      As if in a dream, pavement appears to float near the Lawrence Avenue bridge dividing Etobicoke and Weston. For many, Hurricane Hazel was a surreal experience far removed from the routine of daily life. Martin Taylor was among dozens of engineering students at the University of Toronto who searched the Humber River for bodies after the storm. Each engineering student was expected to walk the Humber, he recalls. Taylor ventured out from his home near Church Street and Jane Avenue the day after the storm to photograph the destruction.

      In Canada the weather makes up much of the news, especially in Toronto, where any major change in the forecast becomes a front-page story. Most often, Toronto’s weather is unremarkable: moderate summers with a few blistering days; moderate winters with a few heavy snowfalls. The autumns are cool and dry, for many the favourite time of year. Rarely does the city see severe conditions, and when it does the novelty becomes, for some, a reason to celebrate.

      Weston Historical Society

      Curiosity seekers on the Etobicoke side of the Lawrence Avenue bridge look over into Weston. Police monitored the deteriorating situation and closed the bridge shortly before its middle section was washed away.

      Weston Historical Society

      Onlookers on the Weston side of the Lawrence Avenue bridge.

      Nobody celebrated the weather on the night of October 15, 1954. Later, people would celebrate the heroes of Hurricane Hazel: the men who rowed the streets of flooded neighbourhoods looking for survivors stranded on rooftops; the volunteers who kept the coffee pots gurgling and the sandwiches coming as the rescuers went out once again, hoping that that family was still clinging to the roof of the house at the end of the street; and the firemen, Boy Scouts, and other conscripts who spent long days away from their families when the water receded, walking river valleys looking for

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