SEP 17, 1949: The Canadian steamship SS Noronic burns in Toronto harbour claiming 119 lives (all but one were American and with some estimates stating 139 victims). The ship's construction was first conceived in 1910 as part of an operating agreement with 2 companies on behalf of the Grand Trunk Railway, and the Noronic was launched in Jun 1913 as a passenger & freight service on the Great Lakes. On the day of the disaster, the ship had embarked on a 7-day cruise from Detroit. After picking up additional passengers in Cleveland and passing the Thousand Islands archipelago, Noronic docked for the night in Toronto at 7PM (with its final destination to be Sarnia where it would remain for the winter). Hours later at 2:30AM, smoke was reported in a C deck corridor and without an alarm sounded, flames began engulfing the hallway which quickly spread because of the interior's oil-polished wood paneling on the non-fireproof walls. As passengers used fire extinguishers (many being defective), Captain William Taylor was informed as the ship's distress whistle blew and half the ship's decks were now ablaze. First spotted by 2 officers and a pier night watchman, they saw passengers jumping out of porthole cabin windows & scaling down ropes into the lake. Many fell to their deaths as human torches. Police, ambulances & fire trucks were dispatched immediately and raced frantically to the harbourfront (arriving at 2:40AM) as fireboats joined the rescue operation to pull people out of the water. With the entire ship now consumed, only 15 crew members had been onboard alongside over 500 passengers and after an hour of fighting the inferno, the fire was extinguished at 5AM and took another 2hrs before the wreckage could cool and the recovery of bodies could begin. The Noronic was a burned-out hull with firefighters finding charred bodies & embraced skeletons completely incinerated with some of the dead still in their bunks. Identifications had to be done through forensic dentistry and the CNE's Horticultural Building served as a temporary morgue. In Ottawa, an Inquiry was ordered by the House of Commons to investigate the accident and found the flash fire had started in a linen closet with most dying from burns & suffocation while some had been fatally trampled in the awful panic to escape. One victim had drowned and one crewmember died from sustained injuries. Blame was largely place on the ineptitude & even cowardice of crew who had failed to wake passengers, make proper sweeps of the upper decks (with exits found on only 1 deck instead of all 5), or inform passengers of emergency evacuation routes/procedures. Taylor was hailed as a hero in the weeks afterward for helping passengers and being the last off the vessel but the Canadian Department of Transport faulted both him & the steamship line for negligence over inadequate precautions taken, and he was suspended for 1yr. One witness accused Taylor of being drunk but other survivors dismissed the damning allegation saying he had behaved normally. After the Noronic sank & lay on the bottom of the shallow water, it was later dismantled on the scene & then its re-floated hull towed afterwards in Nov to Hamilton where it was scrapped. Civil lawsuits were next settled for just over $2 million and in Sep 1999 in commemoration of the disaster's 50th anniversary, the Ontario Heritage Foundation installed a memorial plaque at the Toronto Islands Ferry Docks waterfront site (which was renamed the Jack Layton Ferry Terminal in Jun 2012).
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