Toronto in flames
By Bruce Bell
Toronto has seen some devastating fires of late including the one that destroyed an entire block on Queen West putting people out of their homes and business out of commission last February. To date our city has witnessed two massive infernos so destructive that have been given the distinction of being declared Great Fires and ironically, while they occurred almost 50 years apart, both happened in the month of April.
The first happened on the morning of April 7, 1849 when the area bounded by Front, Adelaide, George and Church streets burnt to the ground. The Great Fire of 1849 started about 1 a.m. in a stable behind a then-popular drinking establishment called Covey’s Inn on the north side of King Street just east of Jarvis. It may have been a cow knocking over a lantern onto a pile of straw like in the legend of the Chicago fire, or it could have been deliberate as were half the fires in the 1800s. No one knows for sure but it grew to become one hell of a firestorm. The flames leapt from floorboards to tin roofs to wooden sidewalks, gathering fuel along the way, and it wasn’t until it reached St. James’ Cathedral at King and Church streets with its giant bell swaying high in the belfry (the city’s fire alarm) that the residents awoke to the full impact of fire. The heat was so intense by the time it got to St. James’ that the giant bell rang out only a few times before it melted and came crashing through the roof below, then splattering on the sidewalk. The heroic fire brigade did what they could, hand-pumping water from barrels atop their rudimentary horsedrawn wagons and what few fire hydrants Toronto had were in the other part of town.
To make matters worse the Water Company building burnt to the ground, alongside everything else in the fire’s path. The residents themselves formed a line of buckets stretching down to the lake in a desperate attempt to save what was fast becoming a lost cause. Amazingly there was only one victim, Richard Watson, a newspaperman trying to salvage what he could from the smoke-filled office of his newspaper The Patriot. Toronto changed forever after that night. The presentday St. James’ Cathedral was built atop the ruins of its predecessor and the old St. Lawrence Market was razed to make way for the opulent St. Lawrence Hall. New laws were passed such as no wooden structures could be built in the Downtown core and brick firewalls between each building were then required. You can visit the plaque we put up to the Great Fire of 1849 at 160 King St. E. in the courtyard.
At the turn of the new century Toronto suffered through another devastating blaze when the Great Fire of 1904 leveled the area bounded by Melinda just south of King, down to The Esplanade, east to Yonge and west to York Street. A total of 122 buildings went up in flames putting 230 businesses out of commission and 6,000 people out of work. How that great fire started has never been solved, though some reports had it that a stove was left burning at the end of the workday. It was a night watchman who first sounded the alarm at 8:04 p.m. on a freezing cold night of April 19, 1904, when he saw flames shooting out of the E. & S. Currie Building on Wellington Street just east of Bay Street. Within moments the fire quickly spread and by 9 p.m. every firefighter in the city was at the site and the mayor—realizing this was to be no ordinary fire—sent telegrams to other cities asking for help without delay. The fire’s progress north on Bay Street was stopped, saving the newly opened city hall on Queen Street. But by 11 p.m., it was swiftly moving south and had reached Front Street where it swept down to The Esplanade and east toward Yonge Street. By 4:30 a.m. the fire was declared under control, though the ruins smouldered for two weeks and thankfully there were no immediate deaths.
The Great Fire of 1904 was one of the first local news events to be caught on film when local film maker George Scott grabbed his then state-of-the-art motion picture camera and filmed horse-drawn steam-powered pumper trucks hurdling their way down Bay Street followed by children on bicycles waving into the camera. However, the greatest loss of life due to fire in Toronto’s history happened on Sept. 17, 1949, when the largest vessel on the Great Lakes, the tour ship Noronic, caught fire and burned in Toronto Harbour, killing 118 people on board.