Victim and hero reunited after 50 years
Published: October 19, 2004
Fifty years ago Bryan Mitchell extended his hand to pull Jim Eady out of a maelstrom of surging water as he clung to a tree for dear life while Hurricane Hazel pulsed around them.
Wednesday, Eady extended his hand in thanks for the first time to the man who saved his life.
Eady, who now lives in Alliston, had no idea all those years ago who managed to save him from becoming another victim of the storm that killed 81 people in Ontario, including five in Beeton, and caused $100 million in damages.
That was until his daughter Marilyn Hatfield read a retrospective in the Toronto Star a couple of weeks ago on the 50th anniversary of the hurricane.
As she was reading a story about an emergency worker recalling how he rescued a man clinging to a tree, a light winked on in Hatfield’s head.
“I realized I was reading about dad’s rescue,” she said.
A flurry of phone calls followed and Hatfield was able to track down Mitchell, who now lives in Midhurst.
A meeting was arranged but a couple of days before they coudl get together, Eady, now 91, fell ill and was admitted to Stevenson Memorial Hospital.
The meeting went ahead, but the location changed to the hospital.
Prior to Mitchell arriving at SMH Wednesday afternoon, Eady cast his still razor-sharp mind back half a century with Hatfield and companion Gloria Ross in the room with him.
He was living in the Islington area and was working for the Department of Highways.
Hazel had been pounding Southern Ontario with rain, saturating the ground to the point the water had nowhere to go. Streams turned into rivers, rivers turned into terrifying white water.
Between 7 a.m. Oct. 15 to midnight the next day, an estimated 210 mm of rain fell on the watersheds of the Don and Humber rivers and the Etobicoke and Mimico creeks, according to Environment Canada records.
Eady, who was 41, said he was going to pick up some pumps to help people pump out their basements. He was on Raymore Drive in Weston with his brother and brother-in-law in his brand-new Chrysler hardtop.
“I looked behind me and there was a great big wall of water,” he said.
The car started to rock as the water rose to the windows as the made their escape.
“We started to battle our way to higher ground and they made it but I grabbed a tree. The water was so strong I went from tree to tree. They kept hollering at me to hang on. I said I couldn’t hold on much longer.”
In Weston, the Humber River rose six metres. The resulting swell swept away a full block of homes on Raymore Drive, killing 32 people in the period of an hour.
Eady can be excused for not remembeing his encounter with Mitchell. The water was frigid. He managed to hold on from 10 p.m. until almost 4 a.m. before he was finally pulled from the water. He awoke in St. Joseph’s Hospital with no idea how he got there.
Mitchell filled in the blanks when he arrived at SMH Wednesday with his wife, Alice.
The two shook hands and Eady tried to control his emotions, but his voice cracked and tears welled in his eyes when he finally got the chance to talk to his rescuer.
“Thank you. Thank you so much. I think it was a marvelous thing you did for me 50 years ago. Thank you,” Eady said.
Mitchell was able to tell Eady what happened. “You knew who I was. I was calling your name,” Mitchell said.
Amazingly, Eady was also a volunteer firefighter and Mitchell’s father was Eady’s fire chief.
“You were so scared. You don’t remember but you knew who I was,” Mitchell told him. “You were in shock, we were all in shock. It was a hell of a thing.”
Within minutes, the two were recalling people and places like life-long friends.
“I thought you would have been dead years ago,” Mitchell marvelled.
“It all worked out,” Eady said with a wide smile. “I’m still here.”
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