Royal Vic fire started in a pot of grease
It was about 6 on a wintry January morning in 1905. The Royal Victoria Hospital, near the top of University St., was waking up. In the main kitchen, breakfast for patients and staff was being prepared.
A pot of grease rested atop a long range down one side of the kitchen. Suddenly, the grease boiled over and caught fire. A tongue of flame flashed up through the hood above the range and rapidly licked its way through the kitchen, igniting everything flammable in its path.
Nearby attendants rushed in and, together with the kitchen staff, somehow were able to smother the flames. But their relief was shortlived. A few minutes later, fire broke out again in the walls and ceiling. Disaster loomed.
The alarm was sounded and soon the fire brigade was on its way. But the streets were snowy and University St. is, of course, steep as it nears the hospital. The horses drawing the reels and pumpers struggled to keep their footing — and their approach was made even harder by the crowds of people who had gathered. Several engines never got closer than Prince Arthur St., too far away to be of use.
The hospital’s original building, which still stands, is H-shaped. The kitchen was on the fifth floor of the six-storey administration block, the bar of the H, and by the time the firefighters arrived, flames and dense clouds of smoke were streaming from the upper-storey windows.
The firemen started their work, but were hampered by the weak water pressure that far up Mount Royal.
A second alarm was sent in, then a third. The fire continued for at least an hour before the men began gaining the upper hand.
In the end there were no injuries, but the administration block was a dreadful mess. The fifth floor as well as the one above, where servants were accommodated, lay gutted, while water damage on the lower storeys was extensive. For example, the nurses’ quarters on the fourth floor would remain unusable for months.
“Streams … ran down every staircase,” The Gazette reported, “forming little rapids as they tumbled over heaps of sodden debris.”
A sheen of ice formed on the walls, and icicles began to appear, reminding many of the ice palaces that graced Montreal’s famous winter carnivals.
Happily, fireproof doors — to say nothing of the firemen’s efforts — prevented the flames from threatening the patients’ wards in the flanking wings, the two upright strokes of the H. Some, in fact, knew nothing of the fire until much later.
Temporary kitchens were set up elsewhere in the hospital, and later that day the Windsor Hotel started preparing roasts and soup for the patients’ evening meal. Ambulances delivered the food, and the service continued for several days.
The other city hospitals stood ready to take in patients if necessary.
Students in the Royal Victoria College, a women’s residence at Sherbrooke St. and University, offered to vacate the premises entirely so that staff whose quarters had been destroyed could have beds.
The hospital had been founded in 1894 by Donald Smith, soon to be Lord Strathcona, and his cousin George Stephen, Lord Mount Stephen. Strathcona quickly urged the hospital board to rebuild, using the most advanced fireproofing methods, and to count on him and other benefactors for financial help. Their intervention and the insurance payout prompted a rush not just of re- building, but also of expansion over the next few years.
There was another consequence. Less than two weeks after the blaze, fire chief Zéphirin Benoît was calling for a new firehall to be built near the hospital, to “afford protection,” we reported, “to that building, the Hôtel Dieu and McGill University.”
Benoît got his wish, and in 1909 construction began on Station No. 28 on Cedar Ave. The station continued to operate, first with horse-drawn wagons and then with gasoline-powered trucks, until 1979, when it was closed and boarded up.
The building languished until 1984, when it was bought and renovated into two luxurious apartments, one above the other. In 2004, the upper-storey owner bought the lower apartment and converted the whole structure into a single residence. Sotheby’s Canada expects to list it for sale in the next week or two.