, the Noronic ran passengers from The Border
Cities (Windsor, Walkerville and Detroi) to Duluth, Minnesota. This
itinerary was revised in September, and her seven-day voyage began
in Windsor/Detroit, continued to Cleveland, then onto Toronto, the
Thousand Islands, and Prescott, Ontario, before returning to Detroit.
September 14, she weighed anchor from her berth in downtown Detroit
at 11 a.m., crossed Lake Erie to Cleveland to pick up more passengers,
then sailed through the Welland Canal into Lake Ontario.
this fateful voyage, 524 passengers, consisting mostly of Americans
from Cleveland, were enjoying a late-summer excursion to Canada
and the layover in Toronto. A crew of 171 looked after their safety
and catered to their every whim.
6 p.m. September 16th, the Noronic slid into her Canadian Steam-ship
Line berth in Toronto Pier 9 at the foot of Yonge Street.
With her bow facing north, and her starboard side secured along
the dock, passengers and some crew soon set out to venture amid
downtown Toronto, a city growing in sophistication in post WWII
the 171 crew, only 16 were on duty that night. Included among those
who went ashore was the Captain William Taylor, who returned at
this hour, most of the passengers had also re-boarded, along with
an unknown number of guests who accompanied passengers to the ship.
It was a cool night with the temperature around 60 degrees and a
steady wind from the southwest. Many of those who remained on the
ship would not live to see the sunrise. Instead, their peaceful
slumber would become a collective nightmare of panic and chaos
fire on the water.