In June, 1877 the Great Fire levelled much of the East Side of Saint John, destroying most of the older parts of Kings and Queens wards. It began in York Point (illustration 21) and moved southward, finally engulfing most of the western half of the East Side. Gone were food supplies, newspaper offices and even ships tied up to the wharves of the East Side. Ten miles of streets were laid low and hundreds suffered financial ruin. Fires were a constant threat to the nineteenth-century city, in Canada as elsewhere, but few had the devastating impact and evoked the sympathy of outsiders as did the fire in Saint John. This colour engraving is based on the work of Edward John Russell (1832-1906).
