With the arrival of winter, thoughts may turn to the good and bad of the season, and to legendary storms and record snowfalls of the past.
Mid-January 1940 brought the town its worst winter storm that year: drifting snow, blizzard-level visibility and temperatures of 26 degrees below zero, Fahrenheit.
Starting on a Monday and worsening by Tuesday, the weather was more extreme than anything Barrie had endured the previous year.
Although most of the county was experiencing treacherous roads and blinding snow, the most serious conditions were felt in Barrie and Orillia. Cars and trucks inevitably ended up in ditches or stuck in the snow.
Many small communities around the county were isolated for at least a day, the roads too snow-filled to pass. The plows, considered a threat to traffic, were taken off the roads during the most fierce hours of the storm.
Between Barrie and Orillia, the storm raged. Folks attending a hockey game in Guthrie that evening were stranded. Unable to get home, the highway blocked with snow, with cars and transports in the ditches, about 50 men, women and children sheltered in the cold arena until they were taken in by local farmers to spend the rest of the night.
In Barrie, the hotels were full. Commercial travellers, having planned to be on their way, now waited out the storm at their hotels. Many members of the county council, in town for the January session and expecting to return home the same evening, were forced to stay the night. People who were travelling through Barrie, decided to stay put, and not venture any further.
The night the storm started, there was a well-timed item on the town council agenda: snow removal. The motion before council was the purchase of a snowplow.
The current process of using a grader and shovelling, took eight days to clear snow from the streets. The cost of the fuel and operator for the eight days was $61.60. With the use of a snowplow, the speed of clearing the streets could be reduced to four days and the cost to $28.40.
In a near-unanimous vote, the motion was carried. A snowplow was purchased from the J.D. Adams Co. in Paris, Ont., for $590.00 — $600 with delivery that same week.
The discussion, initiated by Mayor Robertson, then turned to the problem of snow piling up at gas stations. Neither residents nor businesses were allowed to shovel snow onto the street, so the mountains of snow accumulating at the gas stations was becoming a public hazard.
One alderman proposed that the town charge a rate of 50 cents per load to remove snow from gas station lots.
The next ‘worst storm’ occurred in March of that same year, which was Easter weekend. The blizzard continued through to the Monday and politicians took to hiring sleighs or cars in order to get to council and vote.
So severe was the snowfall, even teams pulling sleighs could not get through some streets. On Tuesday, the bad weather continued. High winds whipped snow from fields onto the roads and highways, leaving cars and trucks mired in the drifts. The highway between Barrie and Orillia was unpassable. Originating in Toronto, a bus heading north, returned two hours after it left Barrie, dropping its passengers at the railway station where they waited for a midnight train to Orillia.
A special train travelling south from Huntsville, passed through Barrie on the Monday evening, filled with drivers who had abandoned their cars in Bracebridge, Gravenhurst, Severn Bridge, Washago and Orillia. One Barrie taxi company instructed its drivers not to accept any fares to Orillia.
Guests at a wedding in Stayner were treated to an unexpectedly cruel spring storm experience. Well-known Barrie barber Bob Bibby, whose shop was located in the Wellington Hotel about that time, married his sweetheart, Anastasia O’Connor, that Monday morning at St. Patrick’s Church in Stayner.
While the newlyweds made it back to Barrie after their reception, many of the wedding guests became stuck in the snow on Highway 26. It was considered the worst March storm in many years.
One of our featured ‘Then’ images was taken in the early 1940s from James Street, on the section of Codrington Street that runs between St. Vincent and Berczy streets. James Street was renamed to Codrington in 1952.
Enjoy these other epic ‘snow days’ photos!
