Fear of a Deadly Fog

"It came across the low-lying fields as a drifting fog that some men saw as gray, some as yellow, some as green."Thus did Historian Ralph Allen describe the deadly mist of chlorine gas that ravaged the Canadian First Division at Ypres in 1915. Last week, as Canada celebrated Remembrance Day--the 61st anniversary of the end of World War I--fear of another kind of chlorine gas attack forced the evacuation of Mississauga, Ont. (pop. 276,000).

Shortly before midnight on Nov. 10, tankers on a 106-car Canadian Pacific freight train, bound from Windsor to Toronto, jumped the tracks. Three explosions from cars carrying propane sent flames that towered into the sky and rattled windows 30 miles away. Firemen at the scene sniffed acrid fumes leaking from one tanker that contained 81 tons of liquefied chlorine; if that car exploded, its contents could turn into a modern equivalent of the deadly fog at Ypres. Within hours, provincial authorities ordered the largest evacuation in Canadian history; with surpassing smoothness, and little panic, most of the city's inhabitants moved to temporary quarters in auditoriums, school halls and churches in the Toronto area. At week's end, a leak in the chlorine tanker had been patched and all of Mississauga's citizens had returned, albeit nervously, to their homes. Proud of her people's calm response to the emergency, Mayor Hazel McCallion said: "There wasn't a bit of trouble."

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