As residents of Spryfield struggled with grief following Tuesday’s fire on Quartz Street that claimed the lives of seven children, one woman’s thoughts turned to a cemetery a kilometre away.
That’s where a mother and all her children were laid to rest after another horrific fire 50 years ago.
On Feb. 10, 1969, a house fire at 715 Herring Cove Rd., in an area known as Chambers Hill, killed 30-year-old Ella Drysdale and her seven children, aged one through 10 years. She was days away from giving birth to her eighth child.
Drysdale and the children — William, Richard, John, Perry, Gary, Donna, and Ella May — were buried together at Emmanuel Cemetery on Sussex Street in Spryfield, along with the unborn child, who was named Neville. A single headstone bears the names of all the family members.
“I was standing at the end of Auburn Avenue and my mom said ‘Stop. Bow your heads, and we all stopped. Nine hearses went by, it was very traumatic,’” said a woman who called The Chronicle Herald.
“I remember at school, we didn’t have grief counsellors then, but we were all crying, we were all upset,” said Sher Ryan, who was seven years old at the time.
Drysdale’s husband, William, was at work when the fire was reported in the single storey home at 8:30 a.m.
Stories from The Chronicle Herald’s archives said that the fire was believed to have started in the kitchen and spread quickly through the home, fanned by high winds. Then-fire chief Ray Cormier said the volume of flames was too great to save anyone when firefighters arrived.
William Drysdale still lives in the area. He could not be reached Wednesday. His nephew, Allan Marryatt, said that “he took it hard, but anybody would take it hard.”
Marryatt was only young when the fire happened.
“I asked him one time years ago about it, and he said not a day goes by that he doesn’t think of them,” he said. “It took him a long time to get over it.”
William Drysdale has regularly placed an in memorium notice in The Chronicle Herald marking the date of the fire. One in 2017 contained the verse “I have not forgotten you nor do I intend. As long as the years roll by, my precious memories will never die.”
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