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“It is the worst disaster that has yet overtaken Northern Ontario,” Globe<\/em> reporter\u00a0Frank Phillips told a stunned province\u00a0on October 6, 1922.<\/p>\n “Outstanding is the destruction of Haileybury. Where the county town of\u00a0Timiskaming stood looking over the blue shores of the lake\u2014a community of fine homes and splendid public buildings\u2014there is now nothing but a waste of charred ruins.”<\/p>\n Whipped by 96\u00a0km\/h winds, the fire\u00a0blasted through the town in the early afternoon. Around 3:30 p.m., a general alarm was raised when the flames\u00a0leapt across\u00a0the town’s rail tracks. Within minutes, the entire business section of the city and the cathedral were\u00a0alight.<\/p>\n All of\u00a0Haileybury’s roughly 3,000 inhabitants poured into the streets, desperate to flee. Most gathered along the wharf\u00a0in the hope of catching\u00a0a boat or sheltering by the water. In nearby Cobalt, people\u00a0gathered at the station in the hope of catching a train out before their town was likewise\u00a0incinerated.<\/p>\n Reporter\u00a0Phillips related the unfolding disaster in frantic detail\u00a0by telegraph to the Globe<\/em> office in Toronto. “Wild rumours are flying, and the smoke is so thick that one cannot see,” he wrote.<\/p>\n “All Haileybury is gone except a handful of houses … the hospital, cathedral, schools, and hotels are wiped out, and the entire business section is nothing but bare ground,” he reported at 10:55 p.m. “The number of fatalities in the destruction can only be guessed, but your correspondent saw half a dozen people fall in the flames or dead by the roadside.”<\/p>\n “In fifteen minutes after the fire jumped the railway track thousands of buildings were ablaze.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The full-scale of the death and devastation became clear when dawn broke on the morning of October 7.\u00a0Haileybury was completely destroyed and practically all of its inhabitants homeless. Bodies lay in the smouldering remains of buildings and lost children wandered the streets seeking their parents.<\/p>\n Those who were able caught a refugee train headed to North Bay. “‘Mammy, I want to go home,'”\u00a0Phillips recalled hearing a child tell its mother as they boarded the train. “‘God bless you, my child, you’ve got no home to go to,'” came the response.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The timing of the fire was particularly unfortunate. The first snow of the season was expected in the coming weeks and temperatures were forecast to fall dramatically.<\/p>\n The Timothy Eaton Co. dispatched a railway car to the town packed with clothes, overcoats, and shoes for adults, children and babies. The store also included packages of bacon, potatoes, vegetables, tinned meats, flour, sugar, and coffee that were handed out at the mayor’s home, which was one of the few to escape serious damage.<\/p>\n The Salvation Army sent 500 overcoats and other items of clothing to the town, the Red Cross set up a station there, but the primary concern was the lack of shelter. Even basic wooden huts\u00a0wouldn’t be ready before the weather worsened, and the threat of additional deaths due to exposure was real.<\/p>\n Surprisingly, a partial solution to the crisis was to be found on the streets of Toronto.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In 1921, many months before the fire engulfed\u00a0Haileybury, the newly-formed Toronto Transportation Commission had suddenly found itself with a surplus of streetcars. At its formation, the city-run TTC\u00a0took over the operations of\u00a0the private Toronto Railway Company and the public\u00a0Toronto Civic Railways organization.<\/p>\n In addition to merging the separate entities together and taking on their equipment, the TTC also elected to purchase a fleet of more than 500 new streetcars. The oldest, most decrepit vehicles from the predecessor organizations\u00a0would be scrapped.<\/p>\n Fortunately, the\u00a0disaster in Haileybury occurred before the TTC could send\u00a0its surplus streetcars to\u00a0the scrapheap.<\/p>\n Toronto formally offered to ship the streetcars to Northern Ontario\u00a0as temporary shelters on October 8, 1922, but the offer was politely declined by officials in North Bay. “Evidently the people of the north had heard too much about Toronto’s street cars to wish them even as emergency homes,” the Star<\/em>\u00a0wrote.<\/p>\n Despite their ramshackle appearance, the disused streetcars were actually remarkably well-suited to housing the displaced populace. Firstly, and perhaps mostly importantly, each was weatherproof with doors and windows. Best of all, many had built-in coal stoves\u2014leftovers from a time before\u00a0electric heaters.<\/p>\n Toronto’s offer was reconsidered, and word arrived on October 10 that Haileybury would indeed accept the shelters. Starting at 7:00 a.m. on October 11, 87 disused TTC streetcars were stripped\u00a0and loaded on the back of Canadian Pacific flatcars at a facility on Coxwell Avenue.<\/p>\n The first of the bunch were handed to displaced families on October 17, according to the Star<\/em>. 60 stayed in the hardest-hit town of Haileybury, but others went to the towns of North Cobalt, Charlton, Thornloe, and Heaslip.<\/p>\n “In my street car I am going to put in another floor to make it a little warmer. Then we will make the beds at one end, have the kitchen in the centre by the stove and have a living room and parlour at the other end,” an unnamed man was quoted as saying by the Star<\/em>. “My wife is all tickled with the idea of our new streetcar.”<\/p>\n “We will be as cosy in them as bugs in a rug, even if it does get forty degrees below zero,” said another.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Those who were unable to secure a coveted TTC streetcar\u2014and there were many\u2014were given free lumber to build a shelter. By the time the men in Haileybury had begun to unload the town’s new shelters, a thin layer of snow was already on the ground.<\/p>\n As Haileybury and its neighbours began to rebuild,\u00a0local officials quickly\u00a0launched a formal inquiry\u00a0into cause of the fire. Despite calls to suspend the investigation until the population could be guaranteed safe shelter, the probe\u00a0pushed onward, eyeing with suspicion farmers\u00a0seen burning garbage or potato stalks in the days before the disaster.<\/p>\n It quickly became clear, however, that several wildfires had been burning unchecked\u00a0around Haileybury for several days before the town was incinerated. High winds ikely fanned the flames, blowing it directly in the direction of the unsuspecting towns.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n An estimated\u00a043 people were killed in the Great Fire of 1922\u00a0and an area of 1,200\u00a0square kilometres of land was reduced to ash. Just a few buildings remained untouched in Haileybury, where losses were calculated to be in the region of $8 million.<\/p>\n Most of the Toronto streetcars were replaced or scrapped in the decades following the fire. One, however, remained in use as a farm shed into the 1990s.<\/p>\n It was lovingly restored and is now on display at the\u00a0Haileybury Heritage Museum<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"toronto](\"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2016\/04\/20160425-Streetcars-PreFire2.jpg\")
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