The Regina Cyclone is popular name for a tornado that devastated the city Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada on June 30th, 1912, around 4:30 p.m. Regina residents also refer to it as the Great Tornado. It remains the deadliest tornado in Canadian history.

Damage

Damage from the tornado is estimated to be F4 on the Fujita scale. The tornado killed 28 people, injured hundreds, and left 2,500 people homeless. Around 500 buildings were destroyed or damaged. The tornado started 18 kilometres (11 mi) south of the city and continued for another 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) north before dissipating. It was 12 blocks long and 3 blocks wide.

Debris was cleaned up quickly and the only remaining "souvenir" of this event are different-coloured bricks on the north wall of Regina's Knox-Metropolitan United Church, showing where the wall collapsed and was rebuilt.

Rumours

The cyclone spawned a number of unsubstantiated rumours, including one that a young man in a canoe was carried five blocks before being brought to earth, badly injured, and another that held a couple missed the sailing of the doomed ocean liner Titanic, only to perish in the cyclone. No evidence to support this has been found.

Trivia

• British actor William Henry Pratt was appearing in a play in Regina at the time of the storm. In the aftermath, he volunteered as a rescue worker. Years later, he would move to Hollywood and change his name to Boris Karloff. In the 1960s, Karloff appeared on the talk-cum-game show Front Page Challenge where he was featured not because of his notoriety in horror films, but because of his involvement in the Regina Cyclone of 1912.

See also

• List of tornadoes and tornado outbreaks

Regina, Saskatchewan | Tornadoes in Canada | 1912 meteorology | 1912 in Canada | Natural history of Saskatchewan