Remembering the 1936 Toronto heat wave

For Toronto residents Jean and Milton Goldstein, living through a heat wave is nothing new.

Jean, 89, and Milton, 90, were teenagers during the summer of 1936, during the most severe heat wave in the modern history of North America. In Toronto, the mercury soared to 40.6 degrees Celsius, which still stands as the all-time hottest day in the city’s history.

Jean, who was 14 at the time, said her family had to crawl through a window to get onto their balcony.

"We would bring out a mattress …and sleep out there or sit out on a beach chair and try and get some breeze," she said.

Milton remembers his family trying to cool off by going to the lakefront.

"My dad got parking space, we took the seats out of the car and put ’em down on the grass and we sat down on the seats," he said.

Dave Phillips, Environment Canada’s senior climatologist, says 780 Canadians died in the heat wave of ’36, with 400 more dying during heat-related activities, such as drowning.

"That one in ’36 was probably more intense, longer lasting and took a tremendous human toll," said Phillips.

The City of Toronto had 240 deaths during the heat wave, jamming obituary pages and causing a flower shortage because there were so many funerals.

Bruce Bell, a Toronto historian, says people in the 30s didn’t have many options when it came to the heat.

"When that heat wave struck, there was no relief from it," Bell said. "You didn’t go to a cooling centre, you didn’t walk around with bottles of water like we do today."

Bell also said people were breathing in a thick haze that hung over city, a product of downtown factories who had no codes for pollution.

To see what downtown Toronto looked like during the 1936 heat wave, check our photo gallery.