The killer ‘Blizzard of ’77’ blasted the area 45 years ago this week
If you have any doubt that people like talking about the weather, check out Darlene Lessard's Facebook group page.
You'll find a deluge of comments reminiscing about a deadly winter storm that happened nearly a half century ago.
That's right. All these years later, great numbers of people - from the Hamilton area, Niagara, Haldimand and Western New York state - are still chattering and posting pictures about the violent blizzard from Jan. 28 to Feb. 1, 1977.
And this week, the long standing private Blizzard of '77" page - with 6,600 members" contributing thousands of posts over the years - will be especially relevant with the 45th anniversary of the start of the five-day storm on Friday.
I remember that it was bright and sunny with large fluffy flakes," says one recent post on the page that requires users to be approved by Lessard. Then a few hours later you could not see down the street."
Another romanticized about it: What an awesome blizzard it was! I love snowstorm's ... We were snowed in at our farm for a week. Great memories!'
But for Lessard, a 66-year-old retired school bus driver, her recollections are more ominous.
I only hope we never see a storm like that again ... it was crazy" she said in a phone interview while snowbound in her home due to the major storm early last week (Jan. 17)."
She noted the storm in January 2022 was bad but nothing like the blizzard of '77.
Thirteen years ago, I thought it would be fun to do a page and see how many people reacted to it," she said. I couldn't believe how much interest there was, even after so many years."
To start it off, Lessard posted a collection of photos her father, Lloyd Goss, took of the blizzard from the Port Colborne area, where he lived at the time.
She remembers her dad telling stories about driving around on his snowmobile, delivering groceries and medical supplies to people who were stranded in their homes. He told us that along the lakeshore in Port Colborne, he would ride over top of houses. That's how deep the snow was." For days, plows and emergency vehicles couldn't get through.
Goss had to watch for short wooden stumps" that were actually the tops of near-buried telephone polls.
The blizzard blasted the Niagara, Haldimand-Norfolk and the Hamilton areas with a winter's worth of snow and arctic temperatures. Hamilton was hammered, but it was worse in the Niagara area where two people died and in Buffalo, where the death toll was 29.
Lessard, who lives in Welland, says the storm started rolling in about noon on Jan. 28, and it couldn't have come at a worse time for her. She was suffering through excruciating gallbladder pain, hadn't slept the night before, and needed medical attention.
They wanted to take me to hospital in a Ski-Doo. But they figured there was no way I would be able to hold on when I was in such pain. So, my husband (Norm) took a chance and drove me," she said.
The roads became impassable, and Darlene, with assistance of her mother, who also came along, walked through the avalanche of blowing snow for the last 1.8 kilometres to the emergency ward. The Welland hospital admitted her, but she had to wait four days for surgery.
One person who had been particularly enthusiastic about contributing to the page was Erno Rossi, a retired Port Colborne history teacher and author. In 1978, he self-published White Death Blizzard of '77" that has sold more than 100,000 copies.
The book tells of hundreds of stories of people struggling through the deluge. People were stranded in cars, there were looters, and widespread grief that lasted for several days in a month that was already notable for snow and frigid temperatures. Sadly, Rossi died at the age 84 last February.
In 2012, he told me the blizzard was something that has never happened before and has never happened since."
Living on the shore of Lake Erie, with the storm coming at him from over the water, he said, I got caught right in the middle of it."
The winds were unrelenting, he said, blowing the accumulated snow over and over again into incredible drifts.
Environment Canada climatologist Dave Phillips described it as a weather bomb ... the granddaddy of them all," something that usually only happens over oceans.
This week in history
Jan. 25, 1954
- More than 120 hunters besieged Hamilton's Gore Park to blast as many starlings as they could to try to deal with an out-of-control bird problem in the downtown core. An estimated 2,500 birds were shot, but within weeks other starlings had moved in to take their place.
Jan. 27, 1891
- John Heslop, 78, the treasurer of Wentworth County, was shot and killed in a confrontation with robbers inside his mansion on Mineral Springs Road in Ancaster. Two men were later charged but the Crown's case fell apart in court and they were acquitted. The crime remains unsolved.
Jan. 30, 1946
- Hamiltonians learned about plans for a new Studebaker plant in the city. A north-end factory that had been used to make anti-aircraft guns during the Second World War was to be retrofitted. Eventually, the first automobile rolled off the assembly line on Aug. 18, 1948. The Mars Avenue plant stayed in business until March 1966.
Postscript
I received numerous emails after the Wentworth Arms Hotel fire column last month with readers wanting to pass on their personal stories. Among them was a note from John H. Miller, of Regency Street:
I was a young guy that Christmas night going into work at National Steel Car and had just taken the bus downtown and got off at Jackson and John streets and immediately witnessed the inferno," he said.
A month later, he said, he was walking by the ruins of the building and noticed a vendor selling soot-stained dinner plates and bread and butter plates" that were monogrammed with the name of the hotel. He bought a place setting.
They are terrible souvenirs of a tragic night," he said of the arson that led to the deaths of six people on Christmas Day, 1976 at the hotel at Main and Hughson streets.