By Jim Hagarty
2012
One of my earliest memories is from my family’s encounter with Hurricane Hazel in 1954 when I was three years old. It was a horrific storm that took 1,000 lives in Haiti and the U.S., as well as 81 lives in Ontario, most of them in Toronto and area.
Of course, I didn’t know any of that. All I remember is my Mom driving in our laneway in our green ’53 Ford and coming to a stop in front of our house and my Dad rushing out of the basement to take her and her kids to shelter in the stone cellar of our two-storey farm home. Along with watching him running frantically out to get us, I remember seeing the storm door on the front door of our house plastered open against the brick wall. As well, the huge wooden barn door on the upper storey of the barn, which I had never seen open and probably never saw open again, was also slammed open against the front wall of the barn.
That is all I remember but I had my eyes opened when a college journalism student of mine in the ’90s did a feature story on the hurricane and its effects on Toronto. I had no idea how really bad this storm was and reading about it now on Wikipedia confirms its ferocity. Houses in Toronto were lifted off their foundation and carried away, one ending up a mile from its original location. And some of the dead were found hanging in the branches of trees.
We talk about climate change and no doubt it is real but this was 58 years ago. People then must have been wondering what the heck was happening, especially in Ontario where these sorts of things just didn’t occur. And with all its fury, the storm was dying out by the time it reached here.
You might have heard the mayor of Mississauga, Hazel McCallion, referred to as Hurricane Hazel. This is where she got the name. Those who tangle with her do so at their peril.
