Warren Park

The Melville family moved into a peaceful valley. Three years later, they were in the eye of the storm.

As told by Garry Melville to Margo Duncan

In Spring 1951, Garry Melville’s parents paid about $7,000.00 and bought the bungalow at 4051 Old Dundas Street, about 300 feet east of the Humber River. The old bridge was still in place back then and they could cross the Humber River to Etobicoke on the west side. The house price was affordable because the area was in the 2nd zone outside the City – the “boonies”.

The market gardens were still actively growing in the valley then and Garry played in the concrete pool where the veggies were washed in the back lane behind Warren Crescent that went straight north to Old Dundas St. The implement sheds were along where the bicycle path now goes into the park, along side their homes, right where the north/south paths go now. Happily, there was an ice cream parlour with a dance hall attached, just past the lane.

In those days there were no special warnings not to go near the river. There was always a bunch (4 – 5 kids) who wandered around without limits; built rafts to cross the Humber River and go to Etobicoke, played baseball in the park where the path beside the river is now. Kids came home when street lights came on or they were hungry.

It was an idyllic life. School was a 5 minute walk, there was ample space to play at whatever caught your fancy – baseball, rafting, hanging-out in the woods playing imaginary games.

In the early years folks would come to the Warren Park valley, get ice cream, then drive across to the Etobicoke side to Home Smith Park Road where there were stables and they rented picnic sites for .25 cents a table near where the washrooms are now.

But then, a lady came to call; that dark and stormy night happened on Friday, 15 October 1954 and the lady’s name was Hazel; the original Hurricane Hazel, the “extratropical storm” that caused 81 deaths, mostly in Toronto. Her fury, roiled the Humber River into an uncontrollable rage, water breaching the banks, washing out whole houses and Raymore Avenue. At the narrow point where the Humber River passed under the Old Dundas Street bridge to Etobicoke, the waves rose to 30’.
Right across the road from Garry’s home, Lambton House was used as a rescue/recovery centre.

Garry was a bit scared when woken around 1:00 a.m. and told to be ready to go. He heard the fire engine going down the Etobicoke side and believes that it was the fire truck that went in, causing the drowning of ½ of the fire crew.

In the relative calm of the next day Garry walked down through the debris to a rise in the park near the current baseball diamond and watched the tatters of people’s lives floating down the Humber to Lake Ontario.

One day when rooting around the river banks on the way to the train tressle, he found and brought home a big bone – it was likely a human bone from a burial site – they didn’t think of preserving or investigating it then, just threw it out. He also found the odd arrow head.

When Garry was home, likely unemployed at around 19, on a Wednesday, he heard a lot of commotion and he ran to the river, coming across the first attempt to rescue a bunch of kids stuck on a pylon under the Dundas Street West high-level bridge. They had gotten onto the centre pylon when a storm up north caused a flash rise in the water level and they couldn’t get back to shore. Someone called the fire department and a small heavy equipment road, likely for sewer work, was used for emergency crew access. Standard ladders wouldn’t work, so they got a bulldozer to clear a path to get closer to the pylon and let the fire truck ladder go across to extract them.

Garry moved back to the valley in the mid-1980s to raise his and Sandra’s son in the idyllic world along the Humber River that he inhabited as a kid. When Garry and Sandra moved to a condo, they chose one on the banks of the Humber River. And every day Garry can be seen doing his walk back through the valley and along the River that has been such a significant part of his life.