FernFolio

On the afternoon of Friday, October 15, 1954, thirteen year-old Lizzie Hardy walks the two McBride children home to their house on Raymore Drive and then prepares to baby-sit them until their parents return home from work. While Lizzie enjoys looking after six year-old Susie, she finds her older brother David a difficult kid to deal with. At eleven, David insists he is too old for a baby-sitter and he constantly challenges Lizzie’s right to tell him what to do.
Walking home that Friday afternoon is made more difficult by the rain that pours down, soaking the three children to the skin. As they descend into the Humber River valley and cross the footbridge to Raymore Drive, David and Lizzie notice that the river has overflowed its banks and that the force of the current has swept all kinds of debris into its waters.
Safely inside the McBride house, they watch news bulletins on CBC about the storm. Hurricane Hazel has caused rain to fall continuously for three days, and flooding has closed underpasses and snarled traffic across Toronto. When Mrs. McBride calls to say that she and her husband will be delayed by the rain, Lizzie realizes that she may have to spend the night.
By ten o’clock both the power and the phones are out, and the two older children begin to feel cut off from the world around them. Dozing on the sofa, Lizzie awakes to find that there is water up to her calves in the living room. Looking out from the house, she and David discover that the river is so wide that they cannot see its edges in the dark, and that the house in now a small island in the current. It rapidly becomes apparent to the three children that they need to keep above the level of the water, and they move first to the second floor and then into the rafters. As the long night wears on, Lizzie and David learn that they will need all of their courage and resolve, if they are going to survive until morning.
This is a gripping account of three children’s experiences during the flooding caused by Hurricane Hazel. Eric Walters has done a nice job of creating two appealing characters in Lizzie and David, and of conveying both the destructive power of mother nature and the resilience of the human spirit in the face of adversity.
FernFolio Editor