The Night Toronto Burned (Featuring the Oldest Film of our City)
Plus some amazing heritage seeds and more.
This week 118 years ago, Toronto burned. The Great Fire of 1904 ripped through the downtown core, laying waste to block after block of the city. This week in 2022, we’ll talk about that disaster — and the extraordinary footage it produced; the oldest film we have of our city — plus some incredible seeds that have sprouted after a century beneath the earth, and much more.
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THE NIGHT TORONTO BURNED & THE OLDEST FILM OF TORONTO
FIRE CODE NEWS — The oldest film of Toronto was shot on a miserably cold night in the middle of April, one of those wintry spring evenings with bitter gusts of wind snow. Preserved for more than a century and held by Library & Archives Canada, the footage gives us a brief glimpse into one of the worst disasters ever to befall our city.
No one is entirely sure what caused The Great Fire of 1904. It might have been faulty wiring. Or a stove. But around 8 o’clock on that terrible night of April 19, a constable walking his beat downtown spotted the first flames rising out of a necktie factory on Wellington Street just west of Bay (where the black towers of the Toronto-Dominion Centre stand now). As the officer rushed to sound the alarm, the flames began to spread. And they spread quickly.
Within an hour, every firefighter in the city was desperately trying to contain the blaze. They’re the first thing you see in the film, rushing down Bay Street with their horse-drawn fire engines. (Although the fact that it looks like daylight in the film and the fire began after sunset always makes me wonder if this part of the clip might have been shot on a different day.)
Those firefighters had a tough battle ahead. You can see the raging flames in the footage, the violent gusts of wind that blew the water from their hoses off course. The tick tangles of newly-installed telegraph, telephone and electrical wires that made it impossible for ladders to reach the flames. It was so cold the spray of water froze in mid-air, coating everything with ice. Textile factories, book-sellers, paper supply companies and chemical manufacturers crowded the city’s core, providing the perfect fuel. The firefighters were being blinded by smoke. The fire chief broke his leg, falling from a ladder. The April snow was joined by a constant rain of burning wood, broken glass, and ash.
The flames tore through the heart of the city, moving south from Wellington all the way down to the Esplanade and east toward Yonge. Twenty acres of downtown Toronto — more than a hundred buildings — were on fire. You could see the glow of the flames for miles in every direction.
Mayor Urquhart sent urgent telegrams to other cities asking for help. And all through the night they came: firemen from Hamilton, London, Peterborough, Niagara Falls and Buffalo joining the fight. Within a few hours, there were two hundred and fifty of them pouring millions of litres of water on the flames. At the Evening Telegram offices on Bay Street, employees spent hours spraying water out the windows to save the building. At the Queen Hotel (which stood about where the Royal York does now), guests and employees organized bucket brigades, hung water-soaked blankets out of the windows and beat off the flames, saving the hotel and helping to stop the fire's advance.
Finally, not long before sunrise, nearly nine hours after it had started, the fire was out. One hundred and twenty-five businesses had been destroyed. Five thousand people were put out of work. More than ten million dollars worth of damage had been caused. Somehow, amazingly, no one had died.
The ruins smouldered for two more weeks, with smaller fires popping up and reigniting from time to time. The charred husks of the damaged buildings were dynamited and the rubble cleared out of the way. You can see that in the film clip, too — carefully set explosions bringing ruins crashing to the ground.
That’s when the Great Fire claimed its only life.
John Croft was an experienced dynamiter — he’d worked in mines back home in England before moving to Canada. He and his team set to work in the ruins of Toronto, lighting long fuses and then running for cover. (If you watch carefully, you can spot someone running in to set a fuse and then sprinting to safely before one of the explosions in the film.) More than two dozen blasts went off without a hitch; their explosions brought the crumbling buildings crashing to the ground, great clouds of dust billowing into the air.
But when a fuse seemed to fail, Croft eventually went in to investigate. The delayed explosion tore through his arm, broke a rib, sliced through his scalp, blinded him in one eye. He didn’t last long after that. He was buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery; a small street between Harbord and College was eventually named in his honour.
Toronto soon rose again. Where the ruins of the Great Fire once stood, new brick buildings (many of those bricks supplied by the now-booming Don Valley Brick Works) filled the skyline. They were built to a new fire code and protected by more hydrants and a new high-pressure water system — all designed to make sure the biggest fire in the history of our city would stay that way forever.
CENTURY-OLD PLANTS REBORN!
MYSTERIOUS PLANT NEWS — Last month, I wrote about the sprawling marsh that once stood where the Port Lands are today. Ashbridge’s Marsh had a notorious reputation, polluted by the growing city and inaccurately blamed for deadly fumes called miasmas that were thought to cause diseases like cholera. The wetland was leveled a century ago, filled in and paved over to become the industrial district we know today.
But the whole area is now undergoing a transformation, with the mouth of the Don River being renaturalized and new neighbourhoods and green spaces planned. And it was during that work that Waterfront Toronto made an exciting discovery.
While they were digging a new path for the old river, they noticed some strange plants that had seemingly sprung up out of nowhere. After a little investigation, they realized those mysterious newcomers had grown from the buried seeds of the same wetland greenery that had once filled Ashbridge’s Marsh — seeds that had laid dormant for 100 years!
Sadly, it sounds like the plants might not be left to grow in the same place they once did. “One challenge we faced in selecting plants for the river valley system in the Port Lands is that wetland plants are very sensitive to fluctuating water levels,” Waterfront Toronto explains. “Lake and water levels fluctuate much more now than they did at the turn of the twentieth century, so we had to reduce the palette of plants to those that are more resilient to changing water levels.”
But fear not! They are being saved. “The historical plants were carefully repotted and relocated to either Tommy Thompson Park or the University of Toronto.”
QUICK LINKS
The best of everything else that’s new in Toronto’s past…
CROSSWALK CARNAGE NEWS — A strange tidbit shared on Twitter by Stephen Wickens this week: the deaths that ensured after Toronto installed its first crosswalks in 1958:
ANTI-APARTMENT MISOGYNY NEWS — Toronto banned the construction of apartment buildings nearly everywhere in the city in 1912. @JusticeQueen6 on Twitter wrote about how “The war against apartment buildings was a war against women”:
PISSED OFF PRINTER NEWS — The Toronto Printers’ is one of the landmark events in our city’s history, inspiring Labour Day and leading to the legalization of unions in Canada — despite George Brown’s effort to crush it. Jamie Bradburn talks about it this week at TVO. Read more.
ELEGANT PARK NEWS — A couple of neat morsels from Eric Sehr on Twitter this week, both about the evolution of St. James Park, which stands on King Street in the shadow of St. James Cathedral.
First, he finds some subtle traces of one of the little streets that used to run through the park:
And second, he shares a gif showing how much trees have done to change the feel of the park over the years:
LONG DEAD ARCHITECT NEWS — Lorna Poplak looks at the life and death of one of Toronto’s greatest Victorian architects. William Thomas designed some of our city’s finest buildings, including St. Michael’s Cathedral, St. Lawrence Hall and the Don Jail. And that last one might have killed him. Read more.
PIONEERING NURSES NEWS — Karen Black explores the history of the first Black nurses to graduate in Ontario. Something that didn’t happen until the 1950s. Read more.
TINY TRACES NEWS — Dave LeBlanc write in The Globe about looking for the tiny traces of Toronto’s history, like an old store name embedded in entranceway. Read more.
SCIENCE HOUSE NEWS — The house in Deer Park where one of Toronto’s greatest scientists, Ursula Franklin, once lived is up for sale. Read more.
TORONTO HISTORY EVENTS
THE DISCOVERY OF INSULIN WITH JOHN LORINC
April 26 — 6:30pm — Online — The Riverdale Historical Society
“The story of the discovery of insulin, at the University of Toronto in 1921, has become one of the most mythologized narratives of Canadian science, and triggered a revolution in the treatment of a horrendous disease that was a death sentence for many sufferers. Yet the mythology has obscured much of what really occurred in the lab run by Banting and Best — e.g., the conflicts within the wider research team, the role that early vaccination research played in their work — as well as the long-tail lessons associated with the discovery of insulin, including the role of the profit motive in drug development and the importance of domestic testing and production infrastructure. The centennial surfaced some of these angles, and the COVID-19 pandemic has served as a reminder about what was lost when Canada divested the Connaught Labs, which played such an integral role.”
Free if you join the Riverdale Historical Society mailing list.
FIDDLEHEAD FERNS & LOYALIST LAGER: HOW FOOD BUILT TORONTO
April 27 — 7:30pm — Online — The North Toronto Historical Society
“What was the food scene of early Toronto, long before its celebrity chefs and foodie festivals? In this presentation by Dr. Laura Carlson, we’ll take a long look at Toronto’s foodways: from ancient Indigenous cuisines to the city’s earliest public markets. We’ll explore how food and drink shaped the very streets of early Toronto, playing a role in everything from politics to economics to culture. Finally, we’ll hear about some famous Torontonians who built their reputations on keeping the city well fed.”
Free with registration, I believe.
FREDERICK BANTING… THE MAN YOU THOUGHT YOU KNEW
May 19 — 7:30pm — Online — Etobicoke Historical Society
“Frederick Banting once wrote, “Insulin was but a means to an end.” After receiving Canada’s first Nobel Prize, insulin did become a means to an end. Unfortunately for Banting, that end was a legacy from which he desperately attempted to distance himself.
“The story of Frederick Banting is well known, but not necessarily known well. While his name has become synonymous with the discovery of insulin, there was far more to this distinguished Canadian’s career than the often-simplified events of the insulin period. Grant Maltman will highlight insulin’s centenary and introduce other aspects of his life and career including his service in both World Wars, his use of art as an escape, and his role as a catalyst for Canada’s military and medical research programs.”
Free for members; an annual membership is $25.
HISTORY OF TORONTO’S CHINATOWNS: A WALK IN TIME 1850–2022
May 25 — 7:30pm — Online — The North Toronto Historical Society
“NTHS member Harvey Low will take a walk through time examining the Chinese population and the different Chinatowns in Toronto, using census data and photos. His presentation will showcase archival photos alongside present-day locations, while also highlighting some of the social challenges that this community faced while integrating into Canadian society. Harvey holds a degree in Urban Studies from Ryerson University, with an emphasis on urban history and demographics. He recently retired after 35 years in municipal government as Manager of the Social Policy & Research Unit. He is a 4th generation Chinese-Canadian with handed-down knowledge of the Chinese Community here in Toronto.”
Free with registration, I believe.