Vancouver's Storm of the Century

"A tree falls in Stanley Park. One tree. Trees are falling all over North America in a storm. But there is no fallen tree we venture to say, which caused more aggravation, more wasted time, more fury, than the one tree, which fell on a car in Stanley Park on the afternoon of Oct. 11, 1962.

"The traffic tie-up reached to Granville Street, in double and triple lines. Nobody could lift the tree because men with axes and saws could not reach the car for traffic. Motorists were advised to turn around and use Second Narrows Bridge. For an hour, there was another big hold-up in Stanley Park_"

The above incident, reported in the Province of the day, was the first hint that a hurricane was coming to Vancouver that fall week. And as that same newspaper reported, by the time the hurricane, which became known as Frieda, had ravaged the city and Stanley Park over two days, it had become the worst storm in the city's history until that moment.