Toronto Star front page October 16, 1954 with photo of a roof top rescue
Toronto. … hurricane Hazel devastates Southern Ontario. Even before Hazel hit in October of that year, 1954 was becoming a special memorable year for me. I left high school at the end of term in June, not to return to formal education for a few years. And I joined the telephone company’s newly formed Toll Area as a technician a month later in late July.
In those days I lived about 60 miles north of the city. That October, in spite of severe rain from the tail end of Hazel, I bussed over-town to catch a flick at a local theatre just a block or two from my new job. The streets were more like rivers as the water reached curb height. The movie had barely started when the house lights went up and the owner said the night’s showing was cancelled due to flooding in the basement from Hazel.
Years later our late editor, Bob Lansdale told me how as a young news photographer, he scooped the city papers. With his large format camera, he shot a person being rescued from the raging Humber and a small part of his shot was the front page photograph on the Toronto Star (perhaps the shot shown at left – you must subscribe to Newspapers by Ancestry to see the archive in finer detail). Bob was remembered by many of the city papers.
Collectors of photographic memorabilia should consider newspaper photographs for their collection. News photographs capture history on the fly! While we encourage all to visit the PHSC 2025 events, we can’t be sure you will discover historic news photographs, but you will definitely spot some things to add to your collection or even your shooting gear whether you use digital or film technology.
Our coming event on October 19th is our famous fall fair which began years ago when one of our founders, Larry Boccioletti, sensed demand for cameras and images exceeded our annual spring fair, monthly meetings, and occasional auction. Check out PHSC News issue 25-7 (July 2025) for more details.
