num_pages: 148
description: Seventeen-year-old Lee doesn't know much about newspapers - he's only ever read the sports and the funnies. So when Lee lands a job as a copy boy at the Toronto Telegram he enters a whole new world, where panic and energy and controlled mayhem rule the day. The year is 1954, a time when newspapers revelled in sensational stories and the shady means of getting them. Lee, taken on by veteran reporter Jack Murphy, witness Toronto's great news stories of the year, including Marilyn Bell's historic swim across Lake Ontario and the catastrophic Hurricane Hazel, the biggest natural disaster in Toronto's history. The other part of Lee's life is spent in a rundown Cabbagetown apartment that he shares with Angela, a struggling actress and communist sympathizer who teaches him about politics and life, and with whom Lee falls hopelessly in love.
language: English
title: The Night Hazel Came to Town
titlecomplete: The Night Hazel Came to Town
ratings_count: 11
places: Canada, Toronto, Ontario, Ontario
awards: awardedAt: 757411200000
name: Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction for Young People
publisher: Maxwell Macmillan Canada