Another Toronto Miracle?

A Delta Airlines passenger jet plane flipped over upon landing at Toronto's Pearson Airport this week, but no one was killed. 

Toronto has long had a history of disasters, where no one was killed, that would have killed dozens or hundreds of people anywhere else.

Early in 2018 two planes collided on the runway at Pearson, and caught fire, but no one was killed.

In 2005 an Air France jet, coming in to land, overshot the runway and burst into flames. Not to worry, this is the city where miracles happen. Over 300 people were safely evacuated and no one was killed. This was referred to as the "Toronto Miracle". It was quite a while before the remains of the fuselage were removed. I saw it from the 401.

In 1979 was what may have been the greatest non-nuclear explosion ever. A train was carrying dangerously explosive chemicals through Mississauga. A brake mechanism malfunctioned and became hot due to friction. The train exploded and the city of Mississauga had to be evacuated. I remember someone going around school saying that there had been a nuclear attack on Toronto. But no one was killed. 

In 1904 a fire destroyed downtown Toronto, but no one was killed. The similar Chicago Fire, in 1871, killed several hundred people.

An exception to this pattern of miracles in major disasters in Toronto is an Air Canada flight that I remember from childhood, in 1970. The plane was coming in to land at Toronto but the cabin crew disagreed on the landing technique. The plane struck the runway but the crew didn't realize how badly damaged it was and tried to go around for another landing attempt. The plane came straight down into a field, killing all on board. The following image, from Google Street View, is the memorial at the crash site. Each victim is represented by a gray stone.

This also doesn't seem to apply to shipping, as we saw in the posting "1949 Disaster In Toronto", September 2024. 

But the miracles seem to go back several decades, plus the fire in 1904.

IN APPRECIATION OF CANADA 

Americans should not forget what Canada has done for us. 

In April of 1970, American astronauts had already landed on the moon twice and a third mission to land was on the way there. This was Apollo 13. But then disaster happened. An oxygen tank exploded and the mission had to be cancelled. The astronauts used a semi-orbit around the moon to aim them back toward earth. 

Since oxygen was scarce the three astronauts had to climb into the smaller Lunar Module, that would have landed on the moon, and use it as a "life raft" to get back to earth. The Lunar Module had to be separated from the Command Module. That required pressure, and exactly the right amount of pressure. Too little pressure and the two modules wouldn't separate. Too much pressure would cause damage that would doom the astronauts.

This was all completely unplanned. It required complex calculations to be done, and to be done very quickly. This was in the days before calculators and there was no time to program a computer.

NASA turned to the University of Toronto. The U of T quickly got the necessary calculations done for just the right pressure. It worked perfectly and the astronauts got back home safely. 

Ten years later, in 1980, the staff of the U.S. Embassy was being held hostage in Tehran. When militants overwhelmed the embassy compound, six of the embassy staff managed to escape.

They went to the Canadian Embassy for help. The Canadian Government issued them passports and they were gotten out of the country on the pretext of being Canadians working on a movie. Americans were very grateful. Our northern neighbor was willing to put itself at risk, it still had diplomatic relations with Iran, to help us.

The following image and caption is from the Wikipedia article "Canadian Caper".

Finally we come to the greatest reason of all for appreciating Canada. On 9-11, U.S. airspace was closed when the country was under attack. Does anyone remember where flights to America were diverted to?

The U.S. Government quickly turned to Canada for help. Our northern neighbor was willing to put itself at risk to stand by us and more than two hundred flights were diverted to Canada. Any one of those flights could have been hijacked. The attacks were over by this point but we didn't know that.

Let's appreciate our northern neighbor because we never know when we might need it's help again.