Cochrane history: Fateful, fatal fire flattens Cochrane on July 11, 1911

Fire is essential to life.  But as the history of Cochrane teaches us, it can be destructive to life, too.

The first big fire that almost flattened Cochrane occurred on Tuesday, July 11th, 1911.

People noticed a black sky and billows of smoke about a mile outside of town.

As Cochrane Public Library archivist Ardis Proulx-Chedore found in her research, two hours later, a furious wind blew the flames into the northwest part of town, where the Timiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway had left stumps to dry.

“Boivin’s mill, east of Spring Lake, north of the 5^th and 6^th Avenue saw that 60,000 feet of lumber went up in flame,” she recounts.  “By 4:00pm, the wind had changed and the fire headed southwest.”

It only took three hours for the damage to be done. Two people were killed.

The Anglican Church was destroyed, but the New Union Station was saved.

By 1913, 3,500 people were rebuilding.  Proulx-Chedore says among the building projects were a library and a school.

“T&NO had donated land for the school at the end of 4th Avenue.  It was built in 1915.  The fire went to the cemetery on Genier Road but did not go to the Gideon Barrette farm, just across the road.”

Even while the library is closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, you can phone or email with requests for material from the archives.