Canada's biggest earthquake since 1653 hits Ottawa in 1925
A regular weekly look-back at some offbeat or interesting stories that have appeared in the Citizen over its 175-year history.
The Ottawa Senators were playing a Saturday night game against the Montreal Canadiens at the Auditorium, the score tied 0-0 halfway through the second period. Sens' rookie Ed Gorman and the Habs' Billy Boucher had just served penalties for a dust-up when the building began to make “ominous creaking sounds.” A window crashed to the ground.
Nearby, at Lisgar Collegiate, all eyes were on teenager Roxie Carrier, in the role of Donna Cyrilla in the musical comedy El Bandido. She had the stage to herself and was singing “Sometime” when the building rocked, the spotlight went out, and someone in the audience yelled “Fire!”
At a home on Carey Avenue, one woman's normally relaxed cat suddenly arched its back, rushed around the room two or three times, spitting angrily, and climbed up the front-window curtains.
Meanwhile, in a room on the top floor of the Royal Victoria Museum on McLeod Street (now the Canadian Museum of Nature), Guy Rhodes was spending his night researching earthquakes.
At 9:20 p.m. on Feb. 28, 1925, an earthquake centred near the mouth of the Saguenay River in Quebec, 540 kilometres from Ottawa, sent tremors and shock waves throughout the entire northeast. According to seismologists at the Dominion Observatory on Carling Avenue, it was the worst to hit Canada since 1653.
In Ottawa, the force of the earthquake, which officially lasted two hours, was felt for about 10 minutes, with residents experiencing aftershocks for the rest of the weekend.
“According to most reports from the different sections of the city,” the Citizen reported, “the quake proper was preceded by a deep rumbling sound similar to that made by the passing of a very heavy truck along the street. This was followed by a slight vibration, which in most cases developed into a north to south swaying movement, repeated several times, with increasing force, which lasted for a few minutes and then gradually died away.”
Yet it caused no small amount of distress, as people ran from their homes, hid, or, in the case of one young woman surrounded by rattling bottles in a drugstore on Rideau Street, shouted, “The end of the world is here!”
According to the Citizen, a streetcar conductor parked on Elgin Street alongside the museum said that his car “swayed decidedly sideways,” while he also noticed the museum “make the preliminary movements of a minuet.” (Although, the paper added, government seismologist A.E. Hodgson expressed doubt regarding the conductor's statement.)
At the Holy Family Roman Catholic Church on Main Street, however, two statues were thrown from their pedestals and broken.
In Gatineau Point, Dr. Sylvio Lafortune said he saw the walls of houses bulge.
Radio technicians recording a concert in the Jackson building downtown described the room swaying “like a ship in a storm.” Ottawa fire chief Robert Burnett, who was at his home, said “The whole house shook like a 1912 model automobile going fast on a rough road. We thought the house was going to collapse.”
Skaters at a rink in Russell rushed for the exits, while “several of the ladies fainted.”
A resident of the Winona apartments on Besserer Street said “it seemed as if an unheard and mysterious wind had struck the building and swayed it back and forth. The tremors lasted several minutes and the absolute stillness outside made it all the more uncanny. Pictures shook on the walls, the steam radiators rocked and the furniture creaked.”
In one home, books “fell on to the floor just as though they had been thrown out together by a human hand.”
Her solo interrupted, Roxie Carrier stood her ground on Lisgar Collegiate's stage. “It's only an earthquake,” she told the audience before urging music director John Bearder to resume the song she was singing.
“She had stopped singing,” the Citizen reported, “and the orchestra had also ceased, but the effect of that young girl standing, a picture of loveliness in herself, unconcerned and waiting for the people to settle down and let her continue her singing, was magnetic, for the people did quiet down and settled once again into their seats.
“Had Miss Carrier rushed from the stage with a scream of fright, nothing could have saved the situation. Her calm attitude before the whole house instantaneously restored confidence, and everyone felt, as I felt myself, if that young girl could see no danger, why should we?”
The Carey Avenue cat, meanwhile, came down from the curtains and “resumed its domestic aspect.”
The Senators won their game, 1-0, yet nonetheless failed to make the playoffs.
At the museum, “considerable damage” was done, including broken widows, some pictures “sent askew” and cracks that formed in the north and south arches on the upper floors, where Rhodes coincidentally discovered a primary source for his earthquake research.
In an unexpected turn, however, the museum saw some earlier damage repaired by the earthquake.
“The anomaly of an earthquake actually doing good instead of damage was reported today by government architects after an examination of the Victoria Memorial Museum. Some years ago, because of defective foundations, it became necessary to remove the tower from the building when a large crack appeared in the walls.
“'The effect of the quake on Saturday night if anything was to squeeze up and reduce this crack rather than widening it,' stated the chief architect today. He said no damage resulted.
“Thus, a problem caused largely by earth conditions, which professional endeavor has been unable to overcome to the entire satisfaction of the architects themselves, Mother Nature has seen fit to remedy.”
Perhaps that was always the plan. In his sermon the following day, Rev. James Hall, pastor of the Calvary Baptist church on Echo Drive, told parishioners that “we should not look on such signs as mere happenings, but as lessons coming from the hand of God in His dealings with men.”
Amen.