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The first signs of trouble came with the morning paper on July 7. A scorching heat that had menaced\u00a0the Prairies and Northwestern U.S. was now sweeping east, forecasted said, with temperatures expected to linger in the low- to mid-30s in Ontario.<\/p>\n
The situation in Ontario\u00a0was already strained. Starved of rain for weeks,\u00a0farmers in Western Ontario complained of dry wells and local creeks reduced to a languid trickle. The area from Hamilton to Niagara and Lake Erie was a “parched waste,” according to the Toronto Daily\u00a0Star<\/em>, with grain crops wilting and fruits and vegetables spoiling on the vine.<\/p>\n “The soil is bone dry and ground plants are sure goners unless we get some rain soon,” said Thomas Richardson, a fruit farmer in Normanhurst, Ontario. “The creeks are dried up, and many farmers here are hauling water from the nearest town.”<\/p>\n Temperatures on July 7 topped out at an uncomfortable 31 Celsius, but much worse was to come.<\/p>\n “The official temperature at 1:30 o’clock was 95 Fahrenheit [35 C] and is reported going higher,” the Star<\/em> told its readers on July 8. In the sun, meteorologists\u00a0recorded the temperature at 60 C, but that didn’t stop people crowding streetcars and ferries to the beach.<\/p>\n Sunnyside, Balmy Beach, and the Toronto Island all recorded record visitor numbers, while drivers lined Fleet Street hoping to fill the cabins of their vehicles with a\u00a0whisper of lake breeze.<\/p>\n Over in Riverdale Park, the keepers gave the zoo animals extra water and tried to offer shade. However, there was no ice bath for the polar bears. “Ice isn’t put in the pool for the polar bears, because once wen this was tried in American zoo, the bears died,” a zoo official explained.<\/p>\n The city water supply was hit hard early on. Parched citizens chugged 104 million gallons from the tap and sprayed what was left onto their lawns that day\u2014close to a record amount.<\/p>\n Though the Hospital for Sick Children reported no heat-related admissions, the effects of the weather\u00a0began to manifest in people’s frayed tempers and angry outbursts. “The nervous strain and irritation caused by the heat would make noises seem more annoying than usual,” said University of Toronto Professor G. R. Anderson reliably informed the readers of the Star<\/em>.<\/p>\n During the afternoon, the temperature hit 40 C\u2014a new record.<\/p>\n Forecasters interviewed by the Globe<\/em> and Star<\/em> predicted\u00a0the temperature would plateau, and they were right. On July 9 the official thermometers again read\u00a040 C\u00a0in the shade. In the sun, meteorologists recorded a mind-boggling 70 C.<\/p>\n “Weary to a point of exhaustion, men, women, children and animals sought refuge from scorching rooms and flocked in tens of thousands to the waterfront,” the Star<\/em> reported. “They found little comfort there. The lake was like a mill pond. What slight breeze there was struck the face like a blast from a furnace.”<\/p>\n Without home air conditioning or any real way to cool down, people began to expire in increasing numbers. In Caledon, a 61-year-old man died while haying on a farm. Two drownings were reported\u2014one in Hamilton, the other in Welland\u2014as people headed\u00a0to the water. James Gibbs, the Hamilton victim, leapt into the water though “he couldn’t swim a stroke,” according to his wife.<\/p>\n Fruits and berries cooked on plants across the city and people fried\u00a0eggs on the searing sidewalk.\u00a0At Sunnyside, a peanut and popcorn salesman named Tony tried to pop popcorn on the scorching asphalt without success.<\/p>\n The heat was so intense it caused the metal deck of the Cherry Street bridge to swell dangerously. Firefighters poured gallons of water on it to shrink it back down to size.<\/p>\n When stores ran out of electric fans, creative\u00a0citizens reversed their vacuum cleaners, filled hot water bottles with ice cold water, or camped out in front of their refrigerators.\u00a0Air conditioned movie theatres stayed open round the clock.<\/p>\n The most visible effect of the heat wave was the human exodus.\u00a0Clutching\u00a0mattresses and blankets, the Toronto waterfront from the Beach neighbourhood to Parkdale was jammed with people desperate to escape the temperature, even for a few moments.<\/p>\n “With no relief in sight, thousands of citizens went native, abandoning their houses,” the Star<\/i> reported. “Donning bathing suits, pyjamas, shorts and the lightest of garments, they climbed into motor cars and made for Toronto’s thirteen miles of lake front to spend the night.”<\/p>\n In the early hours of the morning, beaches from Sunnyside to Kew were a sea of people\u2014some sleeping, others enjoying the bizarre spectacle of the\u00a0city uprooted and dumped on the lake shore.<\/p>\n “It was the younger crowd \u2026 who turned night into day,” wrote the Star<\/em>. “They frolicked on the now cooled sands, swam in the refreshing water, built bonfires, turned on portable radios, strummed on guitars and whiled away the night with song and laughter.”<\/p>\n The third day of the heatwave, July 10, was when things started to unravel. With the temperature again\u00a040.6 C, people began to die in significant numbers.<\/p>\n The\u00a0Star<\/em> and Globe<\/em> newspapers started publishing lists of the deceased, which mostly consisted of old people and children. Some expired due to heart attacks, others due to drownings in rivers, canals, and lakes. Many fainted and didn’t wake up.<\/p>\n The Star<\/em> recorded 22 deaths in Ontario at the time it went to press on the 10th.\u00a0By next morning, that\u00a0number had spiked to 80, and by the end of the week it had reached\u00a0550\u2014225 of them in Toronto. The heat other associated misadventures were claiming so many victims morgue staff, grave diggers, and florists worked overtime to keep up with the demand.<\/p>\n Despite the extreme heat, the humidity was mercifully low\u2014around 25 percent (a Humidex reading\u00a0of 45 C.) Had it been higher the death toll would certainly have been worse.<\/p>\n By the time the\u00a0heat finally dipped into the high 20s on July 15, more than 200 people in Toronto were dead.\u00a0Across Canada, the final death toll was approximated to be\u00a01,180.<\/p>\n A\u00a0million dollars worth of crops across the province were ruined, the city’s water supply was about 30,000 gallons short of its normal level, and tarmac all over the city was rucked and curled.<\/p>\n “It is Hudson Bay air we have been getting last night and today,” said one weatherman on July 10, the first day of cooler weather.<\/p>\n “It surely makes a difference.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"toronto](\"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2016\/07\/20160707-Heatwave-Water.jpg\")
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