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The Great Porcupine Fire of 1911: Part 1

History can be unimaginable through our modern perspectives.  One such event is the 1911 Porcupine Fire.

As we revisit Timmins history, we’ll spend the next few weeks learning about the event that Timmins Museum director-curator Karen Bachmann calls “an iconic event that shaped the community”.

The flames roared through the fledgling mining camp on July 11th.

“It was a huge conflagration that came from the west,” Bachmann tells My Timmins Now Dot Com.  “It went all the way to Cochrane.  It burnt out all the new mining properties. It burnt out all the new communities. It created a lot of different problems obviously for all kinds of people in the area.”

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There were no roads.  On foot or by train were the only way to get in or out, and the railroad tracks were damaged during the fire.

Surveying the tracks damaged by a dynamite explosion duirng the 1911 Porcupine Fire.
(Timmins Museum: National Exhibition Centre)

“There was a huge dynamite explosion at the Dome, which really ruined a lot of the area around the Dome, and those train tracks,” says Bachmann.  “So people could only try to escape by going across Porcupine Lake, and then hoping to outrun the fire at that point.”

Some of the escapees were in freighter canoes, some in their own smaller canoes.  Some drowned when their vessels were overturned by the force of the explosion.

In the weeks to come, our examination will look at stories of survival, and stories of people who weren’t so lucky.

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