As of 2pm on July 11th, 1910, Campbellton was a prosperous town of 6000 people on New Brunswick’s North Shore. Only two hours later, it would be completely destroyed.
That Monday morning had dawned bright and clear, though unusually windy, in the wealthy town that called itself “The Gateway Of The North”. It was another hot July day in an already dry month – it had not rained for more than a week.
Campbellton boasted two schools, a large hospital, fourteen mills, a large woodworking factory, two foundries, and a machine shop. Its progressive and effective city leadership had invested heavily in public utilities, and its citizens enjoyed indoor running water powered by a gravitational system flowing from the nearby hills.
The proud town even had a steam-powered electricity plant – electricity was exceptionally rare in The Maritimes back then.
At two thirty that afternoon, the fire alarm bells rang out. An ember from Richards Mill had caught a shed on fire. The fire department showed up quickly, as well as many concerned onlookers.
After 40 minutes, the firefighters, with their single horse-drawn hose wagon, had just about beaten the fire. Then a single cinder blew onto a nearby pile of wooden shingles.
The shingles burst into flames and were blown by the severe winds onto other nearby buildings, igniting them.
For a second time that day, the fire bells rang out in Campbellton.
The later official report on the events wrote that when the second bell rang, already five major fires were burning out of control: ”the wind swirled the sparks far and wide over the doomed town. By that time, there was no stopping the flames, for fed by the high wind and fed by the flammable material on all sides, the fire reached alarming proportions.”
The Fire Department valiantly tried to stop the flames, but because so many people were also trying to put it out, the town’s water pressure failed.
Nearby Dalhousie dispatched all of its firemen and equipment to help. Their generosity nearly resulted in disaster when a cookhouse caught fire while their entire fire department was in Campbellton. Fortunately, citizens were able to put out the inferno before it spread, although it did burn the cookhouse to the ground.
By now in Campbellton, according to the official report: “In every part of the town red flames were bursting. Dense clouds of smoke rolled towards the sky and settled like a pall over the town. The roaring of the flames sounded like a low rumbling thunder, accented every now and then by the sharp crack of some explosion. By then, the heat was intense."
"As the fire spread it gained momentum; smaller fires were merged into the larger, until Campbellton was an immense seething furnace.”
In a desperate last-ditch effort to stop the conflagration, the firemen tried to dynamite the fire. It didn’t work.
Only 15 minutes after the second fire bell had rang, the sickening realization set in among the townspeople that they had to flee their homes and leave everything they owned behind if they had any hope of getting out alive.
The report continued: “Almost stunned by the terrible disaster overtaking them, the people of Campbellton rose to the occasion and wasted no time in lamentations against fate. Everybody worked, even little children clinging pale-faced and anxious to their parents carried valuable possessions. The sick and feeble were carried to places of safety in the hills surrounding the town.”
The last branch train to Dalhousie departed, overflowing with people. Soon after, the heat of the flames burned the railroad ties and twisted the rails.
People made efforts to save what they could from the flames. Some grabbed blankets. Others rushed to get their life savings, which were often hidden in mattresses.
City clerk John Reid rushed to his office to pack his fireproof safe with all the books and records it would hold. As he did so his landlady appeared and asked him to save her canary. “One’s mind sometimes refuses to function properly under stress,” he commented after observing one dazed man rushing down the sidewalk carrying a chamber pot.
The police station had been abandoned, with three prisoners in its cells. Everyone forgot about them except Mrs. Comely, who lived in an apartment above the station. Although she feared the consequences, she unlocked the cells and let the men go.
Reid wrote that the worst part of the fire wasn’t losing everything he owned, but seeing the raw and visceral fear, panic, and anxiety of parents who were unable to find their children. Parents who had no choice but to flee the fast-moving inferno without knowing if their kids had made it out alive or not.
He noted one father, “driven half mad with fear,” carrying several of his young children away from the flames. In the chaos, however, the father forgot his eldest 11-year-old daughter, who was sick and bedridden. A neighbour dropped the few worldly possessions he hoped to save in order to carry the young girl to safety.
Campbellton was cut in two by the flames, with families separated by a wall of fire that trapped hundreds of people on the waterfront. Big ferry steamships and little privately owned fishing boats struggled against the high winds to convoy people to the safety of Tide Head and Matapedia.
The majority of Campbelltonians fled into the hills surrounding the town. Two babies were born in open fields during the chaos. John Reid wrote that the mothers and babies were healthy.
The official report described that night: “From the boats and steamers in the harbour, and from the hills beyond the town, thousands of weary watchers witnessed the destruction of their town. Families were separated. Men watched the work of a lifetime disappear in a single night. Reports of death came in every few minutes. No one slept.”
Miraculously, in reality, not one single person died in the fire. However, amid all the confusion, rumours spread that the hundreds of people trapped on the waterfront had all been killed. It would take a full week to reunite families who were separated as they fled.
As night fell and 6000 now-homeless people watched the flames devour their town, it began to rain. Soon it turned into a torrential downpour. John Reid wrote that “mothers and fathers held their children tight in a hopeless effort to try and protect them from the rain.”
No one had thought to save any lamps, so they were completely in the dark that cold, wet windswept night. In that bleak moment, however, two leading merchants, George MacKenzie and John Harquail, called a meeting to organise a Relief Committee.
Even as the flames still burned their homes, during that meeting five words were spoken that would become a slogan, a defiant symbol of hope, and the beginning of what came to be called “The Spirit of Campbellton.”
“Rebuilt in a single year.”
The fire that had destroyed the town had spread so fast that word had not gotten out before the telegraph lines burned.
News of the disaster arrived first in Moncton with ICR train 39, which had driven through Campbellton while it burned.
Conductor William Harding told Monctonians how the North Shore town of 6000 people had been destroyed in only two hours, saying “the flames just seemed to roll over the whole town.”
Seemingly, before the provincial government had even learned of the fire, ordinary people in Moncton had already printed and distributed two thousand posters telling of the disaster and calling for help.
Hundreds of Monctonians spontaneously showed up at their train station, bringing food, tents, bedding, money, and medicines for the devastated town.
Back in Campbellton, the breaking of the dawn’s light would be remembered as the single worst moment of the fire. Daylight killed all remaining hopes that any part of the town survived.
City clerk John Reid described the scene as: “ A picture of desolation. Smoking ruins everywhere, here and there still burning, chimneys like spectres still standing, and light and telephone wires curling in the heat, lying all over the streets, which were barely distinguishable.”
However, at 8am, the first rays of hope arrived on wagons and boats from Bathurst and Dalhousie: neighbouring townspeople had been up all night preparing food and clothes.
Back in Moncton, people had quickly assembled enough donations to fill a train.
That train would arrive in Campbellton well before any official government response.
J. S. McGee, a Moncton city clerk, accompanied that train and recounted: “a great many of these people had no food for thirty-two hours … the case was so urgent we simply handed food out of the train windows. There was no disorder; no panic. But! Little children slept last night in the open fields!”
McGee discovered Campbelltonions had already organised themselves into committees. They were feverishly working to unite separated families, begin cleanup, and distribute food.
The situation was dire, though. When McGee entered a coal shed, one of only four buildings to survive the fire, he walked in on a woman giving birth.
Two days later, two trains full of donations from Saint John, along with soldiers and officials, arrived in the first government response.
Faced with incessant heavy rain and 6000 homeless people, officials feared an outbreak of infectious disease like diphtheria or typhoid. Thanks to a coordinated effort by the governments of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, which included 52 officials being sent up from Halifax, the only disease was one single case of chickenpox.
A Saint John Telegraph reporter wrote that only five days later, “the cases of suffering and destitution are now gradually disappearing. Busy scenes of activity are present in various forms… in the midst of a heavy downpour of rain, they continued their building operations, and in many cases snatches of song accompany the blows of the hammers and the sounds of the saws.”
Nine days later, the reporter wrote, “new buildings have been fairly pushed into the air, and in
a short time will be occupied by those fortunate enough to start life anew.”
Campbellton’s destruction and defiant resilience became famous all over the world, largely because of dramatic photos of the destruction being widely published internationally. Financial donations poured in from as far away as Germany and the Philippines.
Boston sent several trains of donations. The city had not forgotten New Brunswickers’ generous response after their own 1872 fire.
Even small towns like Sussex and St. Stephen sent trains of donations.
A notable exception, however, was Fredericton, which was the only city in the Maritimes to not send a train of donations. It was criticized after its mayor and council voted against giving any city money to Campbellton. In the face of rising criticism, the city finally organized a “bonnet hop” as a fundraiser. A “bonnet hop” was a particularly fancy dress dance party featuring silly hats, and was further criticized as being in poor taste when thousands were homeless.
King George didn’t exactly endear himself to New Brunswickers either. He wrote a telegram describing how distressed he was by news of the fire, but sent it to Nova Scotia. “King’s Secretary Is Not Familiar With Geography of Maritime Provinces,” scowled the Moncton Times headline.
Meanwhile, Campbellton was quickly rebuilding, organized by a committee headed by businessman John Harquail.
Before the fire, Harquail had owned a large Campbellton woodworking factory employing 200 people, producing high-end hardwood floors popular among the wealthy of Montreal and Toronto.
He and his employees developed plans to rebuild, including an innovative method of rapidly building identical houses using prefabricated mass produced materials.
With these pioneering methods, they could build an entire house in a single day, for only $300 (which is about $8000 in today's money).
Carpenters, bricklayers and workers were hired by the hundreds. The Campbellton Graphic newspaper wrote, “saws and hammers could be heard at any hours of the day or night. Workmen swarmed over the ruins of the fire-ravaged town like the inhabitants of a molested ant-hill, and soon lofty walls of brick and concrete raised their bulky forms in defiance of a fate the determined rebuilders of Campbellton refused to accept as a final decree.”
They were racing against time and the elements; winter was coming.
The first frost came early in 1910. With 150 families still living in tents, George McKenzie, the Chairman of the Campbellton Relief Committee, toured New Brunswick, asking people who had already donated so much to give even more. $150,000 was raised (around $4 million today).
Only four months after the fire, the first snow fell on Campbellton. The Saint John Telegraph sent a reporter to check on the town.
The reporter wrote that 500 people a day were still eating at communal cookhouses, and that children were running around without shoes. However, there was now a school featuring five teachers, and banks, garbage removal, a sewage system, and a network of outdoor public sinks all operating.
