One-hundred-years ago [now 105 years ago] Wednesday evening, Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden was working quietly on his correspondence in the Centre Block on Parliament Hill. At the same time, members of Parliament were debating Canada’s fisheries in the nearby Commons chamber. All seemed normal in political Ottawa on Feb. 3, 1916.
Then disaster struck, shattering a cold winter’s night.
“Shortly after 9 (p.m., a clerk) rushed in and said that there was an awful fire in the corridor,” Borden later wrote in his diary. “We hurried out and, in the corridor, leading to the reading room there was a great volume of thick, black smoke through which darted long tongues of flame, accompanied by short, sharp sounds like explosions.”
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