Heritage: Hurricane Hazel Night

Newspapers from 1954 covering the ravages of Hurricane Hazel in the Toronto, Ontario were on display at Hurricane Hazel Night at the Lambton House on 16-October-2009

TORONTO, ONTARIO - I walked along the Humber River near my residence earlier today and found the water level to be lower than average for this time of year. That was not the case fifty-five years earlier, as Hurricane Hazel caused the Humber to rise to record levels and leading to the loss of dozens of lives. Those events were commemorated at Hurricane Hazel Night at the Lambton House earlier this evening.

Technically speaking, Toronto was not hit by a hurricane on 15-16-October-1954. The storm which had been Category IV Hurricane Hazel was an extratropical storm that had merged with a cold front and stalled right over the Greater Toronto Area after traveling more than a thousand miles across land from the Carolina Coast of the United States. Still, it was a hundred year storm for the Toronto area with sustained winds of 80 mph (reports were not in the metric system then) and 5.4 inches of rain collected at Malton Airport in 24 hours.


The editions of the Toronto Star on 16- and 17-October-1954 showed some of the damage from Hurricane Hazel, as seen on 16-October-2009.

Much of that water flowed into the Humber River, causing serious damage all along the river's length, with the most serious losses of life in Woodbridge, Weston, and along the border between York and Etobicoke (the latter three all parts of Toronto today). The Humber was the chosen focus by historians Madeleine McDowell and Michael Freeman, who made the presentation tonight at the Lambton House. They set out to record the human stories that occurred along the Humber River during the hurricane, many of which appeared on a DVD produced some years ago. Portions of that DVD and some more recent interviews were presented tonight.

One of the best-known stories was told on the DVD by a fireman working on that night. A teenage couple that Friday night had been caught by the rising waters of the Humber not far downriver from Dundas Street, and a group of five volunteer fire-fighters had gone out to try to rescue them. The rising waters trapped those fire-fighters, and another team from Etobicoke tried to go in to rescue them to no avail, barely escaping themselves. The first fire truck was found after the waters receded near the Old Mill, and metal from the truck was used for a plaque that now sits where the truck was consumed by the flood waters.


The original broadsheet from 16-October-1954 was compared with a 2004 reproduction at Hurricane Hazel Night held at the Lambton House on 16-October-2009

Another of the displays this evening were all the major Toronto papers from the days after the Hurricane. I was especially drawn to a story covered in several papers of a man, identified in the Star as lineman Gerard Elliott, age 33, who was hanging from a willow tree over the Humber during the storm. While police radio traffic reported in the Globe and Mail made it sound like nobody thought he would hang on, somehow he did until the water receded enough for him to safely drop out of the tree and wade to safety; he was a survivor. 81 other people across Ontario were not as fortunate. Bodies washed down the Humber were found all the way on the New York side of Lake Ontario.

One of the things I had wondered about was what routes were actually open with all the damage from the storm, and this was well-covered by the newspapers. With all bridges below Highway 7 out except St. Phillips, Dundas Street, and Bloor Street (and a hastily-constructed Bailey bridge for buses and pedestrians at the Lakeshore), traffic was a mess for a week (and beyond) and the Canadian National reported 14,000 people taking trains across the Humber into Toronto instead of the normal 1,000.

The Lambton House is always collecting more stories about what happened during Hurricane Hazel. If you have a story to share, please contact the Madeleine or Michael at the Lambton House. And, rest assured that there will be another Hurricane Hazel night to collect stories next year.