The Comet That Terrorized Canada
Plus, my new Simcoe Day walking tour is just a week away, and more...
It was three in the morning, the dead of a spring night in 1910. Most of Toronto was sound asleep. But on a quiet residential street in the Annex, an excited crowd was beginning to gather. They'd come to the red brick house at 27 Albany Avenue, just north of Bloor, the home of a man named R.S. Muir. He was already awake, expecting the strangers, ready to welcome them into his backyard. There, a telescope was waiting to be trained on the spectacular sight that loomed above the city in the eastern sky. Halley's Comet had returned.
Muir was an enthusiastic amateur astronomer, one of the few people in the city who owned a telescope — and he was generous, too. You could see the bright streak across the sky with your naked eye, but he told The Toronto Daily Star that if any readers wanted to get a closer look at the famous comet, they were welcome to take a peek through his telescope. The night after his invitation, seven of his neighbours had taken him up on the offer, arriving at his house in the wee hours of the morning to peer up at the heavens with him.
But on the second night, things would get a little out of control.
Halley's Comet has been appearing in the skies above our planet for as long as anyone can remember. Scientists think it has been flying in its present orbit since at least 14,000 BC and the first recorded observations were made more than two thousand years ago. It has been spotted on a regular schedule ever since: once every seventy-five years or so, varying slightly thanks to the gravitational push and pull of the other celestial bodies it passes.
Halley will have been spotted in the skies above this place long before our city was founded. Many Indigenous nations from across the continent tell stories about comets; it's featured in petroglyphs from a thousand years ago. But it has only appeared above Toronto three times since the city was founded.
The first visit came in the autumn of 1835. By then, the comet had been seen as an ill omen for centuries. In the 400s, it was said to have foreshadowed the downfall of Attila the Hun. In 1066, it appeared just before William the Conqueror invaded England, earning a place in the Bayeux Tapestry. In the 1200s, it prefaced Genghis Khan's invasion of the west. And some people in medieval Europe even blamed it for causing the Biblical floods. In the 1400s, Pope Callixtus III denounced Halley's Comet as an "instrument of the devil" and excommunicated it from the church.
By the time the city of Toronto was founded in the late 1700s, the science behind the extraterrestrial visitor was well understood. It was early that same century that Edward Halley pieced together the evidence, realizing that multiple sightings over the centuries were of the same comet returning over and over again. His predictions were confirmed when it reappeared on schedule in 1759.
So, the comet was expected when it appeared above our city in the autumn of 1835. But some still thought it was a supernatural portent of doom. The last time it had shown up was right before the Battle of the Plains of Abraham and the fall of New France. And another comet had arrived just before the United States invaded in the War of 1812. It didn't matter that we knew when Halley's Comet was about to pay another visit, many people across the Canadian colonies still expected disaster to follow.
Susana Reid was an eleven-year-old girl living near Ottawa when made it its appearance that fall. Decades later as an old woman living in Toronto, she still remembered the panic it caused. "The phenomenon caused great excitement," she told a reporter when the comet returned in her later years. "The timid feared it foreboded the end of the world. A great many people who had led bad and careless lives became good, and attended church regularly. Parents were wont to keep their children in subjection by the threat 'the comet will get you if you are not good.' At the first appearance of the comet the children and many nervous women were afraid to look out of the window… General relief was felt when it disappeared."
But it would be back, of course.
It returned once again in the spring of 1910. It was a spectacular sight, making a particularly close pass that year. It was first spotted by an observatory long before it got near us, but by early April you could see it through your opera glasses. By the end of the month, it was visible to the naked eye — even through the haze of coal smoke that blanketed our city. After a few overcast days, the clouds finally cleared to reveal the brilliant visitor above Toronto. "From now on," The Star reported, "everyone will be on the lookout for it."
Many Canadians, however, were still terrified of the thing — even more so because scientists predicted our planet would pass through the comet's tail. Some people refused to buy groceries until it was over. One farmer sold all his cows. Doctors were overrun by patients suffering from comet-related stress. In Québec City, public prayers and Bible readings were held on the boardwalk outside the Château Frontenac. In Windsor, residents turned off their gas in case it exploded upon contact with comet vapour. In northern Ontario, a prospector was so afraid the comet would hit the earth that he tried to escape it and was seriously injured falling out of his hotel window. In Montreal, a teenage girl heard a door slam shut — and with a cry of "The comet has struck!" died on the spot. Another young woman in the same city was said to have suffered a similar fate. And the fact the comet was in the sky when King Edward VII died didn't exactly calm nerves.
In Toronto, however, most of the trouble seems to have been caused by how eager people were to see it. Newspapers reported several stories of viewing parties gone awry. It wasn't just clouds that made it hard to see here.
Public parks officially closed at 11pm — and the authorities in "Toronto The Good" were determined to enforce those rules. When five young men gathered quietly in Riverdale Park to gaze up at the sky, they were arrested hours before the comet even rose above the horizon. The police eventually released them — but only after writing down all their names and telling them to watch the display out their window instead.
Even home viewing could be unexpectedly harrowing. A lawyer in the west end headed out onto his veranda in his pyjamas one night only to discover it was too hazy to see it and that he'd also locked himself out. When his landlord heard noises on the porch, the man burst out of the house with a gun — only with luck and a quick explanation was comet-fuelled bloodshed avoided.
It's no wonder people were looking for somewhere safe to look up at the sky. And it seems there was no more popular spot from which to watch the comet than R.S. Muir's backyard. That first night, the seven strangers had spent about an hour peering through the telescope. It must have been a quietly magical experience, taking turns looking through the eyepiece in the chilly night air, getting an intimate glimpse of one of the great wonders of the solar system.
But the next night, the atmosphere in that backyard was very different.
It began with a ringing telephone. On the first night, Muir had received one call; it was from Grace Hospital, wondering if he could tell them where to find the comet — they'd been looking in the wrong direction. But on the second night, it started ringing off the hook at all hours, strangers making sure it really was okay if they came over. The first of them arrived around 3am, shortly before the comet rose above the rooftops of the Annex. And they kept coming after that, more arriving every minute, milkmen, streetcar drivers, people pulling up on bicycles and climbing out of early automobiles. Soon, the entire backyard was filled with people. There were nearly two hundred in all.
"This morning," as The Star reported, "the 'class' grew to unexpected proportions… The result was that while everyone was given an opportunity of seeing what the comet looked like through the glass no one had a chance of looking as long as he wanted."
On the third night, Muir enlisted help. He reached out to some of his fellow telescope-owners so that three of the devices were available for the curious hordes — but even that wasn't enough. Three hundred people showed up, travelling to Albany Avenue from all over the city. With that, Muir decided things had gone far enough. "I have to have some consideration for my neighbours," he explained. He was forced to retract his offer and shut down the viewing parties. For the rest of the comet's 1910 appearance, only close friends and family would be allowed to witness the wonder from R.S. Muir's backyard.
Within a few weeks, the comet had begun to fade. It was carrying on with its long journey around the solar system. And when it returned in 1986, it was a much less impressive sight. With the comet on the far side of the sun, the viewing conditions were worse than they'd been in all two thousand years of its recorded history. Cities like Toronto had a particularly hard time getting a good look: light pollution had become much worse over the seven decades since the last appearance and this time it was best viewed from the Southern Hemisphere.
Scientists, however, had a bit more luck. This was the comet's first visit since humanity had reached space. An armada was launched by the European Space Agency, Japan, the Soviet Union and France — probes able to study the celestial traveller up close. But even on that occasion, it seemed to live up to its eerie reputation as an ill omen: one of the most vital pieces of equipment aboard the Challenger was a satellite designed to observe Halley's Comet. Seven lives were lost when the space shuttle exploded — and NASA's best chance to study the comet was lost with them.
The agency will get another chance, though, of course. The comet picks up speed as it races past us toward the sun, then slingshots around it and is flung far into the outer reaches of the solar system. That's where it is now, about as distant as Pluto, getting slower and slower as it nears its furthest point. In just a few months — on December 9, to be precise — it will turn back toward the inner solar system and begin picking up speed once again. It will race toward us across billions of kilometres of space until it lights up our night sky with the spectacular display that has been wowing — and worrying — people for thousands of years.
Halley's Comet will make its return to Toronto — and the rest of the world — in the summer of 2061.
It was an article by Julian A. Smith from the National Museum of Science and Technology in Ottawa — published in the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada last time Halley’s Comet paid us a visit — that first tipped me off to this story. You can find it here. And he shared a long list of Canadian newspaper reports about the comet from 1835 and 1910 here as well.
A New Simcoe Day Tour About The Simcoes!
Next weekend is a long weekend. And since the upcoming Civic Holiday is recognized as Simcoe Day in Toronto, I thought it would be the perfect time to create a new walking tour about our city’s founding family. LOVE, DEATH & THE SIMCOES will explore our city’s past through stories about the fascinating couple, their children and their pets. We’ll walk in the footsteps of those who were here in the late 1700s while talking about everything from scandalous rumours to heartbreaking tragedy to the family’s complicated legacy, which we’re still wrestling with more than 200 years later.
When: Simcoe Day! Monday, August 7 at 3pm.
Where: Meet outside the main entrance to Fort York (250 Fort York Boulevard). I’m not yet 100% sure where we’ll finish, but I suspect it will be at the Simcoe Wave Deck on the waterfront.
Price: Pay what you like!
This newsletter is a ton of work! If you aren’t already a paid subscriber to the newsletter and you’d like to make the switch, all you have to do is click the button below. Only about 4% of readers have made the switch so far, which basically means that by offering a few dollars a month you’ll be giving the gift of Toronto history to 25 other people — in addition to getting perks like 10% off my online courses:
QUICK LINKS
The best of everything else that’s new in Toronto’s past…
OH NO I’M SO OLD NEWS — It has somehow been 20 years since SARSfest, the massive rock concert organized to support the city in the wake of the SARS outbreak. It featured an extraordinary line-up including The Rolling Stones, Justin Timberlake, Rush, AC/DC, The Flaming Lips, The Guess Who, The Isley Brothers, The Blues Brothers, Blue Rodeo, The Tea Party, Sarah Harmer, Sam Roberts, and Kathleen Edwards. A friend and I spent the night before the show in the crowd of people sleeping on the shoulder of the Allen Expressway so we could get a spot right up close — and the next 35 hours barely eating or using the washroom… all of which felt very much worth it to my 22 year-old self. The Canadian Press takes a look back at it. Read more.
STRAWBERRY BOX HOUSE NEWS — Jack Landau shares the history behind some of the city’s most iconic post-war houing. As he puts it, “It may seem unimaginable amid Toronto's cutthroat 21st-century real estate market, but there was a time in the not-too-distant past when single-family suburban homes were built en masse with government funding and rented out for cheap to Canadians.” Read more.
RESTORING A GEM NEWS — Landau also shares the news that the beautiful curved old building at Yonge & Queen (tucked in at the corner of the Eaton Centre) is finally being revealed after years of work restoring and expanding it — and that it will eventually feature a new rooftop restaurant with a neat view. Read more.
NIFTY ERASER NEWS — Jeremy Hopkin shares a nifty little video on Twitter (or, uh, X, I guess — sigh) in which he erases a modern day photo to reveal a portrait shot on the same spot nearly a century ago. So cool:
HIDDEN DETAIL NEWS — And Katherine Taylor shares a neat little find on Front Street, the kind of detail it’s so easy to miss: a benchmark outside the elegent old Dominion Public Building… which as she explains “are super cool surveyor’s marks which note the location’s elevation above sea level.”
TORONTO HISTORY EVENTS
ON THE EDGE OF A CITY: TORONTO IN 1833 WALKING TOUR
August 19 — 10:30am — Meet at St. James Cathedral — Town of York Historical Society
“In this walking tour, explore the surviving built environment of the original 10 blocks of Toronto and discover how the Town of York, which started with a population of a couple hundred residents, became the City of Toronto in 1834, with a population of just under 10,000.”
$17.31 for non-members; $11.98 for members
DEATH, VIOLENCE & SCANDAL IN YORK WALKING TOUR
August 19 — 2pm — Meet at St. James Cathedral — Town of York Historical Society
“In this walking tour, explore the scandalous side of Little Muddy York as we walk through the surviving built environment of the original 10 blocks of Toronto and learn about the intriguing stories that would have been the gossip of the day.”
$17.31 for non-members; $11.98 for members
MR. DRESSUP TO DEGRASSI: 42 YEARS OF LEGENDARY TORONTO KIDS TV
Until August 19 — Wed to Sat, 12pm to 6pm — 401 Richmond — Myseum
“The TV shows of your childhood hit closer to home than you might think. From 1952 to 1994, Toronto was a global player in a golden era of children’s television programming. For over four decades, our city brought together innovative thought leaders, passionate creators and unexpected collaborations – forming a corner of the television industry unlike any other in the world. Toronto etched itself into our collective consciousness with shows like Mr. Dressup, Today’s Special, The Friendly Giant, Polka Dot Door, Degrassi, and more. Journey through Toronto’s heyday of children’s TV shows in this playful exhibition.”
Free!
ROOT OF THE TONGUE BY STEVEN BECKLY
Until August 27 — Wed to Sun, 11am to 5pm — Montgomery’s Inn
“Root of the Tongue is an exhibition of new artworks by Steven Beckly. Situated within Montgomery’s Inn, it consists of evocative images, sounds, and sculptural objects inspired by the Chung family, Chinese market gardeners who resided there in the 1940s. Considering their intimate roots to the site as well as the racism and xenophobia they faced during that time in Canada, Root of the Tongue explores the vegetable garden as fertile grounds for rituals of care and cultivation, ripe with symbolism and queerness.”
Free!
TORONTO’S MAYOR FROM MUDDY YORK TO MEGA CITY
September 21 — 7:30pm — Montgomery’s Inn — The Etobicoke Historical Society
“Frank Nicholson will help us see the history of Toronto unfold through the careers of some of the sixty-five chief magistrates the city has had since being incorporated in 1834, including our first mayor, William Lyon Mackenzie, the leader of the Rebellion of 1837, and Mel Lastman, who oversaw the amalgamation of the city and its suburbs creating Megacity, our current city, twenty-five years ago.”
Exclusively for members of the Etobicoke Historical Society; an annual membership is $25.