Hurricane Hazel in Toronto 

Nice job Steve! My dad was a delivery boy for CP Telegraphs, and lost his job because he couldn't get to work on the day of Hurricane Hazel. He loved to tell that story.

I remember, as a 6-year old, sitting in our living room window watching Hazel. I've not seen a storm that comes close to matching it in ferocity since then. I can only describe the way the trees moved as "writhing." We lived only about 2 miles from Raymore Drive but were relatively unaffected. I still love a good thunderstorm.

Love that you added the map and showed the flooding, and not just told. It really adds to the video! Well done, again.

My mother often talked about Hurricane Hazel. It hit 6 days before my 1st birthday.

My parents were married on October 16, 1954 in Toronto. Over the years we’ve heard many stories about Hurricane Hazel. My mother is ninety-five now and remembers it well. Loved your video, thank you!

Thanks for this video. I was 10 in '54 and all over parts of southern Ontario there was major damage from Hurricane Hazel. My Uncle drove myself & my parents out around the countryside near our home in London. I was in awe of what wind can do. A piece of straw was jammed into a telephone pole like a spike! Metal from a barn roof was wrapped so tightly around a tree, you could make out the outline of the bark underneath of it! I was also only two blocks away from a Sunday afternoon tornado that ripped a path through south London 50 some years ago. I'm 80 now and tornado warnings still unsettle me!

When Hurricane Hazel hit, we'd been in Canada for just over a year. Despite the pelting rain and winds, my English born Mum made her way to the local fish and chip shop to get our dinner. A semi regular treat for us ! The store keeper smiled at my Mum - who was a fairly regular customer of his - and said " WOW - you must really love your fish and chips to come out in this weather !" One of our favorite family stories down through the years.

this is excellent work. good for an urban geography class.

I was a six year old kid living in Brampton, just northwest of Toronto and was woken about 2am by my parents who let me gaze out the window as the hurricane passed dumping huge amounts of rain and filling the small Main Creek just across the street from our house on Lowes Ave. I was stunned as the water had risen about 20 feet and was lapping onto our street. Fortunately our then small town wasn't serious damaged and no one was injured, but some 70 years later that night remains fress in my mind.

We moved to Woodbridge in 1959/60 and lived on Clarence Street....I remember as a kid playing in the fields and we always came across various pieces of debris, concrete footings and other things...there were families on my street that had lost loved ones during Hazel...the house we had purchased still had mud and debris in the basement and the yard still had various pieces of junk strewn around...this being 4 to 5 years after Hazel had swept through...while I don't remember Hazel ( I was born in March of 1954 so I was only 7 months old at the time) memories were VERY fresh with many of the adults at the time.

in 1954 my family still lived in the jewish market, when we moved to longbranch in 1970 my grandad told us a story that really bothered him, during the aftermath of the hurricane, men were hired in a hurry to go out in small boats and retrieve non survivors. Grampy was in a row boat with a few other guys just off the shore of what is now marie curtis park, he saw what they thought was a child victim, red hair, a toddler, they all cried quietly as they tried with great difficulty and for a long time, to row thru the debris (and there was a lot, it was almost thick enuf to walk on, so he often said). After a long time, they got there, it was NOT a child, it was a large plastic "walking doll". He said they were lucky & never found any victims, but that dolly sure scared the crap out of him! Great Channel, more west end content please❤ 🙂🙂🙂

During the storm in Toronto at its peak October 15- 16 1954 , the week after October 24 1954 i turned 9 months old here in Mimico . My parents over the years told me about it . 5/18/2024 🤠 i STILL live on the same street (2024 )

Thank you, this is a great video! This event is still very relevant to us all today: in addition to rainwater runoff into streams and rivers, a long-period wave called a "seiche" was the other source of flooding and damage during Hurricane Hazel. As of only a few years ago, residents of Toronto and the surrounding regions will now find exemptions on their home insurance policies for damage caused by "seiches".

My father lived in lower Milton where it meets the town of Oakville at 6th line and lower base line when Hurricane Hazel occurred.The creek behind his house had several large boulders,one which he claimed was about 10 feet high and roughly 2 and half tons in weight.The water swelled and pushed that boulder several hundred yards where it rested on a tree and bush plateau.When he passed in 2020,I scattered his ashes in that same creek as per his wishes.Nicklaus Seidl Jr.1929 to 2020.

So well explained, cannot be improved, thank you

Great video! My family was living at Jane & Wilson at the time of Hurricane Hazel. I was a toddler then so I had no memory, although years later whenever we drove to visit friends on Albion Road, my parents would tell me all about the devastation Hazel brought to that area of the Humber. I can't imagine how frightened they would have been at that time. Thank you for the video!

Thank you, this was very interesting!

I was 8 years old when this happened. I lived a few kilometers from the disaster area on higher ground. I don’t remember much - but I was interested in newspapers at a young age. And I remember the Toronto Telegram headline: “ Hurricane Hazel Heading Here”.

The Hazel destruction was an impetus for the formation of the Conservation Authorities which are now in place.

I was 18 months old on a ship in the St Lawrence and we had to hold position because we could not land in Montreal because of Hurricane Hazel

We lived in a small community just east of Markham and Lawrence, it was called “ The Willows”. Our entire community was wiped out, every house. We were not allowed to rebuild and it became a park. I was only a toddler but my Mom said it was absolute hell, she helped so many neighbors and spoke about it often, it was incredible.

In 1954 I turned 5 y/o, oddly enough I remember Hurricane Hazel. I was in Kindergarten and my mom thinking we were getting rain sent me to school that morning, (That is right I am 5 years old and my mom did not take me to school but like every morning sent me to school 3 blocks away - 1950s) Anyway when my class ended at noon I went home, I had to hold my coat closed because of the wind and the water on the sidewalk was over the tops of my boots.When I got home I was soaked through.

I was 8 years old when Hazel hit. Was living at Bernard and St George st. Really don't remember much of anything except was told to stay away from windows. But being a curious kid snuck to look anyway. Must have looked scary enough because stayed away from windows after that.

We will never forget. My husband and his family were evacuated from Raymore drive and eventually their house was torn down. They lived on the west ? side of the street and during the night some good Samaritan put their dog in their car and he survived. I and my family were technically on high ground, but I clearly remember sitting at the top of our cellar steps watching our belongings in the basement floating by. We were on a sump pump which could not handle all the water. Sad time.

actually here is an interesting fact my grandfather when he returned from WW2 almost bought one of those houses that washed away during Hazel but didn't because his mother reminded him that his older brother drowned in the Don River (September 1921) so he veered away from that ended up in Leaside Same grandfather worked for Bell Telephone which during he worked for 72 hours straight

My dad often talked about Hurricane Hazel, as a captain he was delivering a newly built ship from the UK to Canada

I was about 3 living in Orillia. Our basement flooded to the depth of about 4 ft. It was up to my mom's armpits. I begged her to let me swim in it. She refused. I realized she had no idea of how to live.

At the time I was a student at Royal York Collegiate Institute ( Grade Niner). On the Friday afternoon around 4pm I walked north on Royal York Road to Norseman Avenue then west towards my home. The rain was just tipping down. If I had continued on Royal York, there was a huge valley with a creek in it. When I walked to school Monday morning, this area was completely washed out with a Lincoln car down in the bottom in it. The driver had been killed.

thank u for the map

I was 5 yrs old and remember this day very well. My mother had asked me to take the newspapers to the basement and I yelled back at her that the floors were wet. She said to just drop them but they floated away. My father was on his way back to Long Branch from North Bay. He just made it through The Holland Marsh when it flooded! When he finally got to Etobicoke, a lot of the bridges were out and he had to go around them and finally made it home at midnight. Waiting on the chesterfield and watching out the window was my sister (4) and I and were overjoyed to see our dad pull in the driveway!! The next day we heard all about the flooding at Marie Curtis Park and how the river pulled down houses and trailers from the park just north of The Lakeshore and floated them out into the Lake. I have a picture of Dad standing in front of our house pulling out branches and sticks from the manhole there. 🧑🏻‍🦰🇨🇦

I wasn't born until 1957 but hearing my parents talk about Hurricane Hazel (they lived close by on Wallasey Avenue) left a real impression on me to this day. As an aside, there's a very good novel by Mark Sinnett called "The Carnivor" which is set during the time of the hurricane.

Excellent production. I remember seeing a house washed up on Highway 400 at Holland Marsh.

Nice video Steve. I heard that Brampton faired better during Hurricane Hazel because the Etobicoke creek diversion and canal were completed in 1953. Prior to that Brampton had a history of flooding. One house near Church Street had markings of glood heights as I recall.

I was five years old, living in Leaside & can remember all the warnings to leave the flood plain area - and the papers carried the pictures & stories of the destruction and the people's disbelief! Many refused to leave - Toronto had never had such a storm!!

Great info. I came to Toronto in 2002 but heard of the destruction of Hazel at Don River Blvd/Sheppard where I now live near by.

Really great videos. Please turn the volume up in new videos on your "on location" pieces, its quieter than the overdub and music. Thanks

Fascinating. I'm not from Toronto, but have been through so much. Never heard much detail about hurricane Hazel. IIRC, the Avengers used tbe island rearrangement in the movie.

I was exactly 1 month old and living in Toronto the day it hit. My Mom and Grandmother were (I'm told) oblivious to the whole storm and were in the basement doing laundry.

This happened in the fall before I was born . I know places on the Humber and Credit River in Mississauga were larger chunks of bridge are still there. Today is May 28 2024. 😮

I lived in Etobicoke and the morning after I took my bike and camera and took pictures of flooding and washouts on the Mimico Creek. My wife’s parents just made it back from Toronto across the Bloor St bridge over the Humber River before it was closed.

Right now you only have 80 subscribers but keep it up and you will have many many more

Interesting commentary on contemporary flooding in the Humber, the tree branch sitting high and dry 'on top' of the old bridge abutment.

I remember Hurricane Hazel ... I was just a toddler at the time but that memory, of sitting in the basement with my mother, both of us quaking in fear as the storm washed over our home in Caledonia is actually the first adult memory in my life.

I was five in 1954 and living on Smith Avenue in Hamilton, I recall a huge tree was knocked over by the storm in the alleyway.

My father was a cop in Toronto and was on duty that night as were all officers. I wish I'd paid more attention to his stories. I just remember him saying all they could was stand and watch as house's were washed away

When I was a kid back in the late 1970s we used to ride our bikes down to the bottom of Cassandra in North york. There was a little parkette and vast amounts of wreckage of a bridge or something that had been moved by Hurricane Hazel this got removed in 1981 but I remember fondly playing on these pieces because when your 12 years old what can possibly go wrong

There used to be a bunch of houses next to the river in the early 1950's which was lower than the street level. Hurricane Hazel was vicious when it hit Toronto's west end, those houses was severely damaged making it unliveable & the bridges was damaged or swept away.

When I was a kid, I lived in a place called Pine Grove or now known as Woodbridge. We were not far from the Humber River and we would play amongst the old foundations of houses that were washed away from Hazel. Many of the washed out areas were turned into parks as flood plains. It was a great place to grow up, but you would not recognize it now, all the Nature is gone.

I thought this was going to be about Hazel McCallion ngl

We lived in Cherry Beach which was on Lake Ontario at the foot of Stoney Creek .I was 6 . We lost 20+ feet of our back yard leaving our porch over the Lake . We had WE Goodale move our house 17' forward . On Van Wagners Beach , all the houses and 2 bars were wiped out , The Edgewater Hotel and the Cove .

Good video

I remember that time when living on Queen St.

My Grandparents in law were on a ferry boat in Lake Ontario when Hazel hit, Granny said there wasn't a dry pair of pants on that boat, and not from the rain, lol. People on the mainland watched the ship go down into the waves and then pop back up.

I was born in 1951 and my earliest certifiable memory is of Hurricane Hazel. We lived on Beatrice Street at the time and I remember waking up in the middle of the night by the howling winds. I thought the screeching was some hideous giant bird (Years later I suspected possibly Rodan or the The Giant Claw, but they came out in 1956 and 1957.). The next morning we discovered that the fence separating our backyard from our neighbour's had been blown over. My father and our neighbour struggled to right it which may have resulted in my father's hernia. For years after, "Hazel" was a word uttered in hushed and awesome tones.

We emigrated in ‘57 and parents bought a house on hwy 27 near Lloydtown rd. The house had been damaged by Hazel.

My dad was 19 when that hurricane hit and he loved telling stories of Hazel and how a bridge he crossed was washed away shortly afterwards.

I was 5 and living at Bathurst and St. Germain. Scary!

Hey Steve I was born Oct 14 1954 my father was driving my mother to Humber memorial hospital he said the water was up to the door handles

One of the ladies killed in this storm is buried at the Westside Cemetery, ajoining Sanctuary Park.

We lived on a farm north east of Toronto but the storm was ferocious there too. I was 6 and can remember the sounds of wind and rain all night. In the morning the roof of our barn was gone. I also experienced the tornado of May 31,1985 and the derecho of 2022. I hope that I don’t have to experience any more wind storms. I really feel for the people of central US who have multiple tornado warnings every year or those who live on hurricane coasts.

In October of 1954 my newlywed parents sailed the EMPRESS OF AUSTRALIA from Montreal to the UK, where my father would earn a doctorate under a Beaverbrook scholarship. (This was their honeymoon.) When the ship entered the Labrador Sea she caught up with the remnants of Hazel, no longer a hurricane but still very much a storm. There was a lot of seasickness, of course. They wet the tablecloths to prevent them from sliding!

My dad used to talk about how he tried to drive home during Hurricane Hazel. He said he came to a bridge that he had to cross and it was swaying. He decided to make a run for it and got across. The bridge fell apart after he reached the other side. I wonder if that was the bridge?

The Trailer Park next to Etobicoke Creek where all the House Trailers where that where washed away was Abandoned for 20 years before being developed into Condo Buildings

We used to party down there back in the day. Good times

I am told that my mother was pregnant with me and had to drive through the storm to get to her first doctor's appointment.

As a very young child my mothers tales about being home alone with my eldest sister as a baby during Hazel, scared me. She was in East York.

I've driven over a single lane Bailey bridge in Outer Scarberia hundreds of times. It's a temporary replacement for a bridge destroyed by Hazel, still going strong.

My Grandmother was at Cherry Beach in a car which flipped over when Hazel rolled in....

I recall reading about hurricane Hazel, Christie Pitts was flooded and turned into a lake.

My mother used to tell me about it. It was shocking 😢and more shocking is it’s possible again

I started smoking ganja in 1989 on that broken bridge rock at the beginning of the video… oh the drunken days and nights spent on “the rock” … what memories… so nostalgic my gosh… 💯😇

I love your story on Hazel but you did add some stuff incl The Huttonville dam grist mill that was taken out by the storm the dam was destroyed that night . And at the forks of the credit just off the bruce trail at the s turn just down a very steep trail that was also knoked out evan that far north the storm took things out in caldon ont its hard to find but its just off the trail just ask the concervation people great history .

It to bad you could not have gotten more photo of Toronto after the hurricane. I’m sure the Toronto Star would have had some.

thank you for this, so sad for those that lost their lives ,homes and many land that was bought/taken in order to make safer the river and creeks safer. did you happen to do a video on the area of south etobicoke creek from the qew to the lake, this is much interest to me as i find large boulders in shapes of bridges and or waterfalls separate from the current running of the creek ( about the go-train track area, i have read some documentation of the devastation lower at Marie Curtis Park area. Decades ago i was told the by elders in the area that etobicoke creek had been rerouted in area's after hurricane hazel, but have not seen this documented, only remnants i find walking, thank-you if you think of any referral for me to look up.during large storms the creek does seem to want to naturally flow to these other/ original? area's has caused much flooding, damage, as if the creek is righting its self.

do you ever get up into north york? just east of the don at york mills and don mills, theres an old bridge abutment about 50 feet into the woods on the south side of york mills iv always wondered why it was never finished maybe an alternate rout into the country club that was never completed?

What happened in Hogs Hollow? I guess the houses there now were built after Hazel but what was there before and how were people allowed or willing to build in what seems like a flood plain?

Had enough strength to go 500 miles north, and take out some bush on the north side of Nighthawk lake.

I knew about the hurricane but not how deadly it was.

I had an uncle that died from the hurricane.

They waited 40 years to replace the bridge?

I was pretty far into the video when I realized it wasn't about "Hurricane" Hazel McCallion.

That hurricane path map was inaccurate as the west-end of Toronto got the bulk of Hazel, Scarborough & Pickering not as much as damage as Etobicoke had.

I was 5 living in Acton when Hazel came through. I still have a mental image of that night and the rain pounding down. Nowadays throughout the GTA, developers and some politicos want to redevelop the flood plains controlled by the MTRCA in pursuit of the almighty $ because “ they haven’t flooded recently!!

Even here in The Maritimes hurricanes were rare sure they'd come close but we'd laugh at them trying to make it here with the cold water of late fall. Now it seems like each year now especially since the 2000s that threat of a hurricane is worse each year. Toronto may be like The Maritimes a watcher of hurricanes then scoff as it drifts away only to see more near misses each year until one day ....!!

And now the conservation authorities are being weakened…

Hazel protected wetlands from short-sighted developers and politicians. They wanted highways, malls, business parks and highrises everywhere.

And then she went on to be the Mayor of Mississauga for 50 years. lol

Probably bad time for a housing affordability crisis huh?

Imagine if this happened this year. The carbon tax would be tripled to stop the effects of ‘climate change’.

If a hurricane happened again the way it did with Hazel they'd be screaming "climate change. Look it's proof of climate change."

My parents were 9 and 10 years old at the time and lived in Toronto. They still talk about Hurricane Hazel.