TORONTO

Jury Onyszczak smoked a cigarette in his blue pickup truck as he watched firefighters work on the charred remains of his red-brick two-storey semi-detached home.

A thick album of family photographs — not recovered from the early morning fire but borrowed from his brother who lives nearby — sat on the floor beside him.

He said he lost everything in the fire that engulfed the house on Elvina Gardens he bought from his first wife’s grandfather in 1978.

“It’s really hard,” Onyszczak said. “The house, I don’t care, it can be fixed, but the things you collect, you know. My mother’s pictures, my father’s pictures, all this is gone.”

As of Thursday night, the probable cause of the fire was a power surge that may have affected an appliance still plugged in when power was restored, Toronto Fire Service said.

“They can’t of anything else that would’ve started the fire,” Capt. Mike Strapko said.

When the power went out Sunday, Onyszczak slept the first night in his still-warm Mt. Pleasant Rd.-Eglinton Ave. home.

The 60-year-old soon realized it was getting too cold indoors. He moved to a friend’s house in Ajax.

He wasn’t in his usual residence when the fire struck the house around 5 a.m., causing $1 million worth of damage and ruining his neighbour’s roof.

Thankfully his neighbours were in St. Catharines celebrating Christmas, he said.

“So there was nobody around,” Onyszczak said. “Actually everybody was deserting the street because it was too cold to hang around.”

The fire gutted his entire home. Sunlight shone through the now-demolished roof on Thursday, as a city official inspected the structure.

Onyszczak said he now only has the clothes on his back, his wallet, and his truck.

“I don’t know, what am I going to do,” he said. “All my personal possessions, I got nothing else. Just this truck and what I’m wearing.”

Lost are a collection of watches, he said, along with a collection of nesting dolls, and antiques he used to collect.

Not wanting to impose on family, he plans on moving into a nearby hotel and begin the process of rebuilding.

The home was supposed to start making money soon for him as a rental property.

“It was going to go up for my retirement income,” he said.