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Photo taken day after the Great Fire of Porcupine (Northern Ontario) in July 1911. Shows smoking ruins of Golden Avenue south end of city.
Labeled ‘GOLDEN AVE So PORCUPINE AFTER THE FIRE’
Message on back
The South End the day after the fire, it is a mass of tents now and nearly as busy as ever. Will write you at Elmwood have no time now but thought you would like these
Pat
Postmarked ‘PORCUPINE ONT JUL 28 11’, sent to Toronto
The Great Porcupine Fire of 1911 was one of the most devastating forest fires ever to strike the Ontario northland. Spring had come early that year, followed by an abnormally hot dry spell that lasted into the summer.
Porcupine, a community on the north side of Porcupine Lake, in the city of Timmins, Ontario, Canada, was the site of a huge gold discovery in 1907. On July 11, 1911, when the Porcupine Gold Rush was at its height, a gale from the southwest whipped some small bush fires into flames.
The blaze formed a horseshoe-shaped front over 36 kilometres wide with flames shooting 30 metres into the air. It laid waste to about 200,000 hectares (over 494,000 acres) of forest and killed at least 70 people, though early reports indicated thousands. Many people were drowned as they fled into Porcupine Lake to escape the flames, while others suffocated to death under the mines. At one point, a car of dynamite stored at the railway station exploded, lashing the lake into waves 3 metres high. The exact number of dead is not known as the vast forest in the region contained an unknown number of prospectors at the time of the fire. Official counts list 73 dead, though it is estimated the actual toll could have been as high as 200.
WIKIPEDIA
