The Great & Deadly Snowstorm of 1944

One of the biggest snowstorms in the history of our city came on December 11, 1944. The forecast called for just a few inches, but instead Toronto got two straight days of wintery fury. The storm killed 21 people. One died when the Queen streetcar was blown over by strong winds. More than a dozen met that most Canadian of ends: death by the shoveling of snow.

The Toronto Star headline the next day declared, "Whole City Stopped as if by Giant Hand." People were trapped inside their homes behind snow drifts. Even the ammunition factory was forced to close — a pretty big disaster in its own right during those final days of the Second World War.

blogTO has more photos and information thanks to a post by Agatha Barc here. And as for this particular picture, I can tell you that we're looking north up Yonge Street toward Richmond just after the storm. That building on the left is gone now, but that other one just up the street is still there. It was the Simpson's Department Store once upon a time. Now, it's home to another one of our oldest companies: The Bay.

Frozen Niagara Falls in 1848 (Probably)

Okay! A quick and not strictly Toronto one. I posted to this to Facebook months ago, but didn't get around to sharing it here. This is Niagara Falls, frozen over. Some people say the photo was taken in 1911, but apparently, amazingly, it seems more likely that it was actually taken in 1848. An ice damn which formed at Fort Erie that year caused the flow of water over the falls to stop completely. 

Toronto, as you might imagine, has had pretty a close relationship with Niagara ever since our city was founded. Back in the days when we had less smog, you could even sometimes see the spray from the falls all the way over here. We also dammed it in the early 1900s to provide the city (and much of the province) with hydro-electric power. In fact, the whole reason Toronto was built here in the first place was to replace the original capital at Niagara-On-The-Lake. It was too close to the border with the States back in those days, when a war with the Americans was just a matter a time.