Blog Post Ten
Photo by Nikolas Noonan
Tornado ‘87
If you’re researching the newspaper archives for family members who lived in Edmonton, Alberta 35 years ago you may not be expecting so results. It’s not totally unheard of to read about an ancestor that may have died in a natural disaster in the Canadian prairies but it’s less common there. It would certainly be surprising to learn that not only did the person you’re researching die in a natural disaster but so did several other people. Parents died protecting their children, some children died, some grandparents died. On 31 July 1987, in the course of an hour hundreds of people were injured and many had their homes damaged or destroyed entirely. In the aftermath, it was determined that 27 people died in the most powerful storm in the province’s history. That day has since become known to locals as Black Friday,[1] the dark and stormy day an F4 tornado[2] carved a path from the town of Leduc through the city of Edmonton causing devastation the city hadn’t seen before or since. It’s been 35 years since Black Friday and while the damage has long since been repaired, the memories haven’t faded and the emotional impact the tornado had on people remains to this day.
I lived in Edmonton at the time, I was just a baby and my mother was driving me home from a doctor’s checkup when she could see the tornado in her rear view mirror while listening to the radio, this was the first she knew about the tornado. She drove us back to our house where the sky was completely clear; we lived in the Hermitage area with the Kennedale Ravine behind us. My mother continued with our day as usual and put me down for my afternoon nap while listening to the radio for updates because, by now, there had been warnings issued and the DJs were talking about it. Not much time had passed before she noticed the sky had become very dark and gathered myself, our dog, and took us to the basement without knowing what else to do or how long to be down there for. This was very close to the Clareview area where the tornado levelled homes a few blocks from ours. When we went back upstairs the tornado had uprooted a tree in the ravine. From there, the tornado was on its way northeast to the Evergreen Mobile Home Park community where 700[3] mobile homes were located. We had family members that lived in one of those mobile homes and this area suffered the most destruction and largest loss of life. Fortunately, our family members were out of town that week otherwise we may have lost them. After the tornado had left complete devastation in its wake, my parents remember a considerable amount of rain falling for a long time afterward, my father remembers the rain coming down so hard it was coming into our basement through the chimney cleanout but luckily was near a rain so we avoided damage. Our family members were in touch quickly wanting to know if they still had a home to come back to but no one from outside of the mobile home park was allowed in for a few days. My parents remember not being able to find our aunt’s home, my mother remembers how the whole area felt heavy with loss and grief.
Photo by Chandler Cutten
In the days that followed, media and citizens recounted how the day began and what they remembered happening during the storm. Many also wondered whether or not the tornado warning was fast enough. One of the first witnesses to the tornado was a pharmacist and farmer, Tom Taylor, who was at home on his farm in Leduc when he saw the tornado forming and touching the ground.[4] Seeing storm clouds form on a hot summer day is nothing unusual until the shape of the clouds changes and the colour of sky draws attention. “The main cloud had wisps going around it[5],” Taylor recounted when talking to The Edmonton Sun. “Suddenly I saw a narrow funnel drop right to the ground kicking up dust in all directions.”[6] What a terrifying sight for anyone to witness, to see a massive tornado head toward a densely populated capital city knowing the day was about to get really, really bad for a lot of people. The path of the tornado began there in Leduc, which is south of the city, and travelled north east starting in the neighbourhood of Mill Woods. The tornado continued to move into an industrial area known as Refinery Row which was likely what my mother saw from her rear view mirror, continuing through the city to the Clareview area as previously mentioned, before decimating the Evergreen Mobile Home Park on its way out of Edmonton.[7] Just as my mother had witnessed the tornado in her rear-view mirror, hundreds of other Edmontonians must have had the same experience seeing the dark sky from their rear-view mirrors or from the windows of their homes; what a terrifying sight. Especially for those living at Evergreen, the panic must have been unbearable seeing the tornado travelling in your direction and not having a basement to hide in. Edmonton city hospitals were beyond capacity as hundreds of injured citizens entered their emergency rooms[8] needing both physical and emotional care as the trauma must have been agonizing. Imagine how those citizens must have felt leaving the hospital to go back to a home that was severely damaged or to a pile of rubble with nowhere to go coupled with the overwhelming stress of wondering what to do next had to have been crushing. So many questions must have filled the minds of everyone affected. How much would insurance cover? Where will we live? Can we afford this? Can I work enough hours to pay this off? Was my workplace destroyed? To suddenly have to think about all of these things following an unexpected tornado was undoubtedly a tremendous shock. “The very notion that [a tornado] could be ripping a destructive path through our city seemed bizarre, unreal. They just don’t happen here,”[9] said Paul Stanway for The Edmonton Sun. He was right, everyone was in disbelief, even looking out of their windows and seeing the dark sky in the minutes before the tornado hit Mill Woods, the possible appearance of a tornado probably never entered people’s minds until they actually saw it. Even the weather officers from the Alberta Weather Centre at the time knew a tornado was possible that day but never anticipated any to form,[10] and when the question of whether or not the tornado warnings were issued quickly enough for people to get to safety the officers had a simple explanation. “You almost have to have a confirmed report of a tornado before you can put out a warning because nothing shows up on the screen until it’s actually there.”[11] Has this changed in the last 35 years? Now as it was then, weather services rely on reports from citizens who see the storms produce tornados in real time. On Black Friday, one of the first warnings the weather office received about the tornado was from Tom Taylor, the pharmacist and farmer from Leduc. He called the weather office just before 3pm[12] to report the tornado heading north east and within the hour the tornado had ripped through the city of Edmonton.
My parents kept a lot of newspapers from the days following the tornado and those sources of have been extremely valuable in capturing the shock felt by a city completely unsure of how to proceed. How they proceeded was to immediately band together and collect essentials for people who lost everything, Black Friday was the day “the City of Champions” motto was born.[13] A great deal was written about this tornado by Edmonton’s major papers so there is a wealth of detailed information about the good, the bad, and the ugly regarding how the city’s rebuild was progressing. Many people outside of Alberta aren’t aware that Black Friday happened but for those of us who were there or grew up there, a tiny wave of fear ripples through the body when dark clouds gather or funnel clouds form. Naturally, I don’t remember any of it being so young at the time but the awareness of how traumatic Black Friday was has always been present. I can’t imagine how intensified that awareness is for the families of those 27 people and for those who lost everything they had. For them, every time a storm rolls through it must induce a strong feeling of panic, like muscle memory. The video you’ll find below is a music video by the Rural Alberta Advantage and their musical memory of the disaster, “Tornado ‘87.” They, too, remember.
Photo by Michał Mancewicz
[1] Randi Mann, “Recalling Canada’s second-deadliest tornado – tore through Edmonton, killed 27,” digital report, The Weather Network, The Weather Network (https://www.theweathernetwork.com/ca/news/article/this-day-in-weather-history-july-31-1987-edmonton-alberta-tornado : posted 10 July 2021).
[2] “Scientist says tornado among worst,” Edmonton Journal (Edmonton), 06 Aug 1987, p. B3, col. 1; imaged in Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com/ : accessed 20 June 2022), filter by date and location.
[3] “Tornado kills at least 36,” Edmonton Journal (Edmonton), 01 Aug 1987, p. A1, col. 1, line 45; imaged in Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com/ : accessed 20 June 2022), filter by date and location.
[4] The Edmonton Sun, Black Friday, (Jasper Printing Group, 1987, Second Printing), p. 3, col. 1, lines 1-5.
[5] Black Friday, p. 3, col. 1, lines 7-10.
[6] Black Friday, p. 3, col. 1, lines 7-10.
[7] “Tornado kills at least 36,” p. A1, col. 1, lines 5-8.
[8] “Tornado kills at least 36,” p. A1, col. 1, lines 54-55.
[9] Paul Stanway for The Edmonton Sun, Black Friday, (Jasper Printing Group, 1987, Second Printing), p. 2, col. 1, lines 11-16.
[10] “Weatherman headed for cellar moments before tornado hit,” Edmonton Journal (Edmonton), 01 Aug 1987, p. A2, col. 1, lines 9-12; imaged in Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com/ : accessed 20 June 2022), filter by date and location.
[11] “Weatherman headed for cellar moments before tornado hit,” p. A2, col. 2, lines 8-12.
[12] Black Friday, p. 3, col. 1, line 11.
[13] Jonny Wakefield, “Looking back at Edmonton’s deadly Black Friday tornado, 34 years on,” digital report, The Edmonton Journal, The Edmonton Journal, (https://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/looking-back-at-edmontons-deadly-black-friday-tornado-34-years-on : posted 30 Jul 2021)