The Hot Box Project
Memories of November 10, 1979: The Train Derailment and Evacuation in Mississauga
Where were you 30 years ago?
Call for Submissions
The Hot Box project is a community art project currently accepting submissions for a November 2009 exhibition to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Mississauga train derailment and evacuation from November 10, 1979. People are invited to share their stories, drawings and objects to honour early Mississaugans and the “Mississauga Miracle,” an event that brought the City together as over 225,000 people were displaced after the derailment. Students are also invited to participate by journaling and interviewing parents, relatives or neighbors to add an educational aspect to the project and make new connective memories for Mississauga’s youth.
How to submit your entry
Visit Hot Box Mississauga on MySpace; e-mail hotbox24@live.ca; or mail your entry to:
Heritage Mississauga
C/O Hot Box
1921 Dundas Street West
Mississauga Ontario L5K 1R2
The first deadline for submissions is June 10, 2008. Please include contact information on a separate piece of paper. By submitting, you are releasing all rights to your entry. Mailed entries will not be returned.
Background of the train derailment
On the evening of Saturday, November 10, 1979, Canadian Pacific freight train number 54 was carrying 106 rail cars from Sarnia to Toronto on a weekly scheduled run. Thirty-eight cars were carrying cargo designated as hazardous, including liquid styrene, caustic soda, liquid petroleum products and liquid chlorine. At approximately 11:53 p.m., as the train crossed Burnhamthorpe Road, an axel bearing failed and one rail car lost a pair of wheels. The train continued until, at approximately 11:56 p.m. at the Mavis Road crossing, 24 rail cars derailed. The immediate and massive explosion caused by ruptures in butane and propane-carrying rail cars was seen more than 100 km away. Several subsequent explosions followed the first explosion within minutes, one which hurled a 90-ton tanker car filled with liquid propane more than 675 meters away from the derailment site.
The initial cause of the derailment was a “hot box” – a journal box that connects the moving axle of the wheel to the car above. As the train reached Mississauga, the hot box failed, and the 33rd car, which carried liquid toluene, lost its axel and a set of wheels. When the dangling undercarriage of the damaged car left the rail tracks, 23 other cars followed it. The resulting evacuation of more than 240,000 residents took place with little panic or injury and no loss of life.
Dubbed the “Mississauga Miracle,” the evacuation was the largest peacetime evacuation in North American history, and may only have been eclipsed by the evacuation of New Orleans in 2005. About 226,000 residents of the young City of Mississauga were asked to voluntarily leave their homes. Additional residents in neighboring Etobicoke and Oakville also had to be evacuated. Once a home was evacuated, a large “X” was marked on the driveway. People opened their arms to the evacuees. Grandparents, sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles and friends welcomed them. Schools, hospitals, the Red Cross, police, firemen and Square One aided the displaced.
Amalgamation and the creation of the City of Mississauga was not an easy process, nor was it welcomed by many residents of the former towns and villages of Toronto Township. To many, Mississauga was artificial, forced and difficult to accept, as there didn’t seem to be any common basis that brought residents, planners and city officials together as a single entity. That changed in 1979, perhaps the true birth year of the city, as the city that emerged from the fire was quite different.
Why “Hot Box”?
As the red square in the middle of a quilt symbolizes the home’s hearth, the heart of the home represented by fire, the hot box is symbolic of the fire which created the heart of Mississauga. The hearth is the center of the home, and the fire is the heart of the home; Mississauga’s baptism by fire will be remembered 30 years later as the birth of the city.
The Hot Box project aims to connect to the community by exhibiting the stories, drawings and objects to honour the Mississaugans who came together to create the collective heart of the city.
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