By the time the temperature rose again on July 10 to 40.5 C, at least 50 people had been sent to Toronto hospitals with “heat prostration,” and ambulance workers were called in to help from out of town.
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
Then the temperature rose above 33 C on each of the next four days.
The Toronto Daily Star reported that 10,000 men, women and children were sleeping on Toronto’s waterfront, while thousands more camped out in public parks and backyards, searching desperately for some nighttime respite from the raging heat.
Fruit was simmering and baking on the vine, and people were frying eggs on the pavement, at least according to sincere-sounding newspaper accounts.
Bell Telephone noted a 50 percent jump in long-distance calls to and from Toronto, as worried relatives checked in with their slowly wilting kin.
The heat wave finally broke on July 15, as the high dropped below 30 C for the first time in a week.
At least 225 Torontonians, most of them young children and the elderly, had died from the heat.
Another 225 or more died in the rest of the province, as Hamilton, Brantford, St. Catharines, Stratford, Windsor and Sudbury all staggered through temperatures of 38 C and above.
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