Bannerman Park's biggest tent city happened 131 years ago in the wake of a stunning fire

Since early fall, a tent city in Bannerman Park has been drawing attention to homelessness and the affordable housing crisis in St. John's.

Many of the encampment's occupants have declined emergency shelter placements due to safety and hygiene concerns and are instead using their visible presence in the heart of the capital city to advocate for long-term, accessible housing solutions for all.

But this is only the latest tent city to emerge at Bannerman Park.

The largest appeared in the wake of the Great Fire of 1892, and we may be able to take a lesson today from how authorities handled that situation more than 130 years ago.

Late in the afternoon of July 8, 1892, Patrick Fitzpatrick was milking cows in a barn near the intersection of Freshwater and Pennywell Roads when he noticed a plume of smoke.

Fitzpatrick maintained that a spark must have blown over from a neighbour's chimney, but others believed the farmhand, who had been fired for drunkenness and was later arrested for cutting the tongues of his employer's horses, lit the fire accidentally or intentionally.

Whatever the fire's original cause, it was fanned by a comedy of errors.

The fire engine's steam pump took 20 minutes to heat up, an emergency water tank nearby had been emptied during fire department training and never refilled, and the water pressure in the hydrants was too low to use because the the mains had been turned off for repairs that morning.

The fire spread out of control, with the help of windy, dry conditions, and by 5 a.m. the next day it had consumed two thirds of the city, leaving nearly 11,000 people homeless.

According to a first-hand account by Presbyterian minister Moses Harvey, "It made the heart ache to see the groups of men, women and children, with weary, blood-shot eyes and smoke-begrimed faces, standing over their scraps of furniture and clothing — some of them asleep on the ground from utter exhaustion — all with despondency depicted on their faces. They filled the park and grounds around the city."

The "park" Harvey is referring to is Bannerman, and the other "grounds" were Railway Meadow, the Parade Ground at Fort Townshend and the shores of Quidi Vidi Lake — all level, open spaces at the periphery of the ruined city.

Those displaced by the fire who couldn't find accommodations with friends or family set up donated tents at these locations, but they didn't have to live in them for long.

On July 9, while St. John's was still smouldering, Chief Justice Frederick Carter — Newfoundland's acting head of government while Gov. Terence O'Brien was vacationing in England — directed workmen to begin building shelters at Bannerman and the other encampments.

Two days later, Justice Carter also established a bipartisan relief committee, with members of various classes, religious denominations and levels of government, and put them in charge of the donations of goods and funds that were rolling in from around the world.