53rd anniversary of the Sudbury Tornado, one of Canada's deadliest

It is a grave anniversary for the City of Greater Sudbury, one of both tragedy and community resilience as Sunday marks the 53rd anniversary of ‘the Sudbury Tornado.’

The cyclone touched down about 8:30 a.m. on a Thursday, Aug. 20, in the summer of 1970 giving little to no warning for the people who found themselves in its path.

Starting in Lively, a community now part of Greater Sudbury, the tornado tore a path through the town – which Inco, now called Vale, owned at the time – destroying hundreds of homes before heading east towards neighbouring Copper Cliff, arbitrarily targeting homes there.

The local mining giant of the time, Inco immediately halted smelting operations as trains were thrown around the region like children’s toys.

The twister made its way through the City of Sudbury’s boundaries and continued through to the town of Field, Ont. leaving devastation and destruction in its wake – even spawning a second tornado.

While there was no reported funnel cloud, the tornado has since been classified as an F3 with wind speeds reaching up to 332 km/h.

The storm eventually made its way to North Bay and weakened as it got closer to Ottawa.

In Sudbury, six people were killed, 200 were injured, and thousands of lives were thrown into chaos.

During a report on the tornado’s 50th anniversary in 2020, one survivor, Lloyd Prowse said he still recalled the dark day a ‘freak’ tornado turned his life upside down.

He had been sleeping and woke up on the floor during the storm.

"When I woke up, I had my knees on the floor and my arms on the bed and the bed had already gone down against the wall. The house had already gone around and I had already had the ride," said Prowse in his interview with CTV News.

"I looked out to the kitchen, I knew there were three windows there and there wasn't any, and it was right full of mud and lightning."

Recovery efforts began right away – former Lively mayor Len Turner and former Sudbury Mayor Joe Fabbro declared their communities disaster areas and the military moved in to help.

Members of the provincial and federal governments were dispatched to the city and Sudbury City Council established a $2 million relief fund to help those impacted.

After Lively was rebuilt, Inco sold the homes privately to the workers who had been renting them.

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The City of Greater Sudbury has created an interactive ‘story map’ that takes users on a historical journey through the events of August 20, 1970. Using Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping, the application follows the route of the tornado and shares archival photos and media coverage.

The story map can be viewed here.

This grim anniversary comes little more than a week since an EF0 tornado was confirmed over a lake in Greater Sudbury by the Northern Tornadoes Project at Western University – continueing a summer of extreme weather.

– With files from CTV News videojournalist Ian Campbell 

House destroyed by tornado in Sudbury in 1970 (Greater Sudbury Historical Database)