Page 22 By Gregory Reynolds They knew of the danger but ignored it. They knew they had no defence but accepted it. It was July 1 1, 191 1. The Porcupine Mining Camp was 3,000 people in three small communi - ties and at nine mines under construc - tion. It hadn’ t rained in six weeks. The day , a T uesday , dawned with soar - ing temperatures and gale force winds and for 71 men, women and children it was their last sunrise. Forests fres had been burning across Northern Ontario for three months. No one worried about the many fres burning in the bush, some set by hu - mans. The quickest and easiest way to clear land, whether it is for a mine site, a farm or merely a home was to cut down the tree s and burn them in piles. Prospectors used fre to clear the area around promising outcrops. All through June and July miners, settlers and their families lived under skies blackened by the smoke from hundreds of fres along a 50-mile front stretching from the Hollinger to Porquis Junction. Porquis was to lose half its buildings. The monster was born somewhere south of the Hollinger Gold Mine and when it approached South Porcupine it stretched across 10 miles with a mile of steel-furnace heat in front of it. The wall of fre moved faster than a horse could run, witnesses were to say . Flames leap from treetop to treetop in advance of the wall. The few shacks that were to become Schumacher and the McIntyre and Hollinger gold mines escaped the blaze, partially because the wind was from the west and partially because a brush fre on May 19 destroyed the Hollinger ’ s surface buildings had cleared the general area. In South Porcupine and Pottsville some people tried to fght the fres while others fed to Golden City (Por - cupine). Eight-foot waves on Porcupine Lake swamped many of the boats and some people drown. The lake was the favored refuge. W omen and children stood up to their necks in water , huddling under blan - kets while the sky turned black at noon. Pieces of trees fell among them, hurled through the air by the winds. Part of Golden City , all of Pottsville (now part of Porcupine), and all of South Porcupine, as well as the mine sites of Dome, W est Dome, North Dome, East Dome, Standard, Pres - ton and V ipond disappeared. The railway had reached South Por - cupine on July 1 and a boxcar of dy - namite and kegs of powder sat there. The fames caused the explosives to detonate, destroying numerous build - ings in the immediate area and digging a hole 15 feet deep and wide enough to hold fve houses. It was a day of heroes and deadly er - rors. The mines stopped work and set their employees to fghting fames that were licking at the trees that ringed their sites. That proved fatal for many of the workers. Men risked their lives to drive hors - es out of stables and to get the pan - ic stricken-animals into rivers and lakes. Mine captain Robert W eiss led his wife, three-year -old daughter and 17 miners into the W est Dome shaft……. where all but one, a miner , were as - phyxiated when the fames roared overhead and sucked up all the oxy - gen. No one knows the exact death toll. The great mining rush into The Por - cupine that began 1n 1909 was still drawing unemployed men, fortune hunters, trappers, lumberjacks , travel - ling salesmen, gamblers, perspective Cont’d on pg. 22 Death raced acr oss tr eetops into mine sites and communities “The Porcupine Camp” 100 Y ears of Mining Page 20