First, there was the Great Fire of 1911. Then five years later, the Great Fire of 1916.
Over the next couple of weeks in our Cochrane history segment, we’ll retell stories from the Northland Post, of the fire and the people who survived its path of destruction.
The fateful day was July 29th. Here’s library archivist Ardis Proulx-Chedore with our first story:
“The new hospital on the northern edge of town was threatened. The flames raced towards the building that that been cut off from the rest of the community and lacked adequate transportation to move the patients. Nurses, doctors and patients watched through the windows as the fire drew closer.”
Just as the flames reached the building, the sky miraculously opened up and a heavy downpour quenched the flames, there and throughout the rest of town.
“As the sharp ringing of the fire alarm cut through the smoke,” the report continues, “the women and children moved with quickening steps to the station, and the trains which stood by to take them to safety.”
Although there were some fatalities in the bush, the only death in town that day was an infant separated by flames from their mother. She had left the child on the Sixth Avenue sidewalk – an area she thought safe from flames — to investigate whether her nearby home was on fire.
Thanks, as always, to the Cochrane Public Library for its help towards our weekly history feature.
