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THE ELEMENTS Take it easy my friendly, Take it easy and You'll last a whole lot longer And finish a whole lot stronger That was the sign off for Moe Lesser who had the Mickey Lester show on CKEY in Toronto. He was on the air from Monday to Friday from 11.00 p.m. to Midnight. It was 1954 and I was working in the control labora- tory for Lever Bros. down on Eastern Avenue. The plant ran 24/7 and some of the lab. staff also worked seven days a week on a three shift basis. This night was a horrible, rainy, windy night as the tail end of Hurricane Hazel was in it death throes over Toronto. Iwas on the 4 p.m. - 12 midnight shift and aside from the wind and rain beating on the windows it was a normal quiet time in the lab. - testing the melting point of oils being hardened through the intro- duction of hydrogen (hydrogenation) was not a noisy proc- ess nor was testing the adequacy of the quantity of lye added to oil to make soap (saponification) and sundry other tests to control various processes in the plant. The radio provided an excellent jazz background and periodically Mickey would mention some of the dam- age that was occurring around the city and suburbs as riv- ers, creeks and other water courses began to turn into raging torrents. The shift ended and I got to my car through the downpour and immediately turned on the radio. Not many stations were on the air 24 hours a day. CKEY was one that was and Mickey was pressed into service as a reporter on the scene as he travelled about the growing number of areas experiencing flooding. It was not a pleasant drive home but traffic was light and none of the roads on my route home was excessively flooded. Our neighbourhood was not seri- ously damaged but I listened fascinated as the various trailer parks on the west side of the city were washed away. Several years later when I was working for Peel County Health Unit I saw some of the extensive damage that had occurred along the Etobicoke creek and other water ways. As the years went by I lived through wind and rain storms but remained somewhat aloof since none of the fam- ily or our home suffered much damage. Oh the odd loos- ened shingle and fallen tree branches but nothing serious. Often having had a tornado or such near us, in, I suppose rather ghoulish curiosity, we would drive out to see 'the damage'. The most awkward time was when, due to an ice storm, we were without Hydro for two weeks in a house we had rented in Cheltenham. The landlord, a relative, brought his generator up several times to let the furnace run. But we stayed locally in a home with a coal furnace and cooking facilities. In this instance, because it had a direct effect on me personally, I appreciated the difficulties created by nature gone extreme. I felt the same loss being unable to do something about it as did, I'm sure, the people east of us who were victims of the huge ice storm several years ago. When I became in charge of the Province's multi- thousand buildings all over the province the incidence of damage by nature was frequent but again I did not feel a personal involvement. Of course we would send equipment such as pumps and generators from one district to another to provide help where it was needed, such as the significant tornado damage that occurred in Barrie a number of years ago. So on Thursday, September 9" I realized we had had significant rain all night. I went out to the rain gage in the downpour and it read 5 % inches. We waited for the nurse to arrive to take blood which I would then take to the hospital. She came via Picton to Cherry Valley and then to us. She said Bond Road was the worst she'd seen that morning with water pouring over the road in three locations and a tree which had fallen across the road but moved by someone into the ditch left its mark of bark and twigs across the road. I headed into Picton via the Old Milford Road and aside from heavy rain and the swollen road side ditches I arrived at the hospital without mishap. I then did some shopping and headed home. As I was unloading the grocer- ies from the car this anguished voice from the garage steps said "We've water in the basement". What a shock | We never had water in the basement since we moved here eleven years ago. We had about % inch mainly, of course, Continued on page 9