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" Storm of Flame " f The year 1853 was long remembered in Renfrew county as the " Black Year " . On May 16 , a terrible fire swept nearly the entire country from the Deep River to the Bonnechere River . The spring of 1853 had been exceptionally dry . But this fire orig - inated from the burning or clearing of new land in different parts of the county . A high wind developed and created a storm of flame that ruth â€" lessly wiped out homesteads and settlements before being stopped at the Bonneohere River , near Renfrew . Approximately 350 homesteads were left in ruins , in a. territory of 450 square miles ; yet , by a. miracle only two lives were lost . The destruction was so great that it prompted Rev. Goerge Bucker , a. Congregational minister in Pembroke,to make a mercy tour of the fire swath in an effort to hasten Legislative and Municipal aid . Rev. Buoker then wrote a moving article for a. newspaper , describing conditions in the stricken area . He described the tottering chimneys standing in the clearances , the heaps of broken kettles , twisted stoves and charred equipment , the skeletons of horses and cattle . Rev. G. Bucker found the homeless people in hurriedly erected cabins with unchinked walls , but these cabins were palaces compared to the wretched camps of the poorer classes , who were poorly fed , poorly clad , and swamped by the pitiless rains that followed the drought . Others crawled on all fours into root houses scooped out of the sides of ravines , literally living in holes and caves of the earth . For lack of fences around the fields , the surviving cows , often attacked by bands of wild dogs , had to be driven to the unburned bush where they remained unmilked for days . Many children , lacking milk and butter , lived for the rest of the summer on dry bread and halfâ€"grown potatoes . Meanwhile the men , toiling early and late , endeavoured to gather the crops , already half-devoured by roving animals , into hastily erected , halfâ€"covered barns , or stacks in the fields . It is to the everlasting credit of the rugged settlers that they eventually emerged from the disaster of 1853 , and made their districts as prosperous as any in the Ottawa Valley . Thus the human spirit tri - umphs over adversity and defeat . Across the years we salute the memory of that brave breed who builded better than they knew . (as?