Scout `angel' recalls fiery horror

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Jul. 18, 2006. 06:01 AM
JIM COYLE

Long before there were Guardian Angels, pressing their largely
unasked-for services upon a largely unreceptive city, Toronto had
guardian angels of a more popular and fetching sort. And, happily, I
had reader Glen Bonham to remind me.

Recently, after the death of a retired harbour police officer who
played a role in the long-ago drama, I wrote about the burning of the
cruise ship Noronic at the foot of Yonge St. in 1949, and the death of
119 passengers in an inferno that gave downtown Toronto the look of a
city under siege.

Afterwards, though it had been "a long time since I thought about the
horrors of that night,'' Mr. Bonham passed on his own recollections of
the Noronic catastrophe and how he came to be involved in "a way that
would never happen today.''