The following is a re-print of a past column by former Advertiser columnist Stephen Thorning, who passed away on Feb. 23, 2015.
Some text has been updated to reflect changes since the original publication and any images used may not be the same as those that accompanied the original publication.
Last week’s column described the 1954 fire that destroyed the Jesuit Novitiate on the northern edge of Guelph.
That blaze, along with one that claimed the Mundell Furniture Company’s Mill Street plant in Elora, were the major blazes of 1954. Volunteer firefighters had many other calls that year. The following are a few of those.
The big one in Erin in 1954, Wellington’s centennial year, broke out at Wright’s Garage on the afternoon of Aug. 3. Though the proprietor should have known better, his standard practice was to have an open bucket of gasoline handy for cleaning oily engine parts. On the fateful afternoon, an employee was using a grinding wheel in close proximity to the bucket. All it took was one spark.
The shop portion of the building was engulfed in flames before the Erin volunteers arrived. Their big fear was for the pair of gasoline pumps at the front of the building. The new mutual aid system proved its worth that afternoon. Firefighters from Orangeville and Alton soon joined their Erin brethren.
The combined forces were able to bring the blaze under control, and prevented an explosion that might have turned the blaze into a major disaster. Most of the damage was restricted to the shop. A car and truck, there for repairs, were completely destroyed, along with much of the equipment. Though severely damaged, the roof did not collapse.
Wright’s showroom, adjoining the shop, suffered smoke and water damage, affecting two vehicles on display there. Water, smoke and some fire damage also claimed a second floor apartment, occupied by Cecil Watson and his family. Volunteers and spectators helped remove most of the Watsons’ household effects when the fire was still in its early stages.
After the fire, Wright stated his intention to reopen as soon as possible, using the slightly-damaged showroom as an interim shop. Damage to the building and the vehicles in it passed the $30,000 mark.
Barn fires made the news all too frequently in 1954. The Elora area experienced two in the fall of 1954. Others claimed farm buildings in all corners of Wellington.
On Oct. 24, Earl Watt of West Luther lost his bank barn, 40 by 60 feet in size. He lost his implements, his hay crop, and some livestock. Arthur firefighters responded to the call, but their efforts were largely futile. They spent some time trying to extinguish the blaze, and then devoted their energies to saving the house.
Earlier that same day, a passing motorist noticed flames issuing from a small barn owned by Harold Cox, near the corner of Highway 24 and the 8th Line in Erin Township. Cox removed four ponies before Erin firefighters arrived with their two trucks. Both had water tanks, and the firefighters made several trips replenishing them before they had the blaze extinguished.
Halloween has always inspired certain brainless members of society to start fires as pranks. That may have been the explanation for the burning of what was known as Shand’s bridge in West Garafraxa Township. The bridge was almost entirely wood. Its trusses were made of timbers bolted together, and covered with siding and a small roof to keep out the elements. This was the last surviving example of the work of noted bridge builder Richard Boyle, who constructed it more than a half-century earlier.
About 3am on Halloween morning, a carload of Fergus lacrosse players, returning from a tournament at Cornwall, spotted flames on the bridge and turned in the alarm. West Garafraxa had a fire agreement with Fergus, and the firefighters arrived quickly. From the smell and the nature of the fire, it was clear that the fire was no accident. Someone had doused the downstream truss and part of the deck with gasoline. The truss was almost burned through before they had it extinguished. The deck, damp from the weather and the water underneath, sustained only superficial damage.
With one of the trusses useless, the township closed the road, and investigators from the OPP poked around the site. Some people saw a more sinister impulse behind the fire. The span was hopelessly obsolete, and inadequate for the trucks then using the township’s roads. Neighbouring residents had pressed for years to have it replaced. Some saw the fire as an attempt by someone with a short temper to force the issue.
West Garafraxa council had planned to replace it in 1942, when the bridge at Con. 6 was removed when that area flooded as part of Lake Belwood behind the new Shand Dam.
The 1942 council planned to use that bridge, which was made of steel, as a replacement for the Con. 2 bridge. Unfortunately, the work necessary in building new abutments and approaches made the project uneconomic. They stored the bridge for a time, and eventually used it as a replacement for Smeltzer’s bridge, over the Irvine between the 5th and 6th Lines.
The fire added one more headaches for Reeve Tom Hutchinson and his council. As a result of Hurricane Hazel, they already had a bridge to replace over the Irvine. Now Shand’s Bridge was on the priority list as well.
No one was ever apprehended for torching the bridge.
The county’s last fire of 1954 occurred on Dec. 6 in Fergus. Returning to his St. Patrick Street residence at about 9:30pm, Roy Walser noticed flames across the street in the office of Dixon Lumber, which was then located on St. Patrick Street. This was an easy one for Fergus firefighters. The old firehall was only two blocks away. The men soon had the fire extinguished. Potentially, this could have been a major conflagration.
An overheated furnace pipe was responsible for this fire. It set fire to the wall between the office and shop. Firefighters did not need a lot of water. That minimized the damage, which was roughly $1,000 to the building and a similar amount to inventory. The building was a fairly new one, constructed in 1945.
These fires, and several others during the later months of 1954, occurred while the county’s fire departments were developing the first integrated mutual aid system.
There had been various “gentlemen’s agreements” in place for years, to provide assistance to neighbouring forces in the event of major fires. Nothing was on paper for most of those agreements. Some had been worked out between chiefs, and their own councils were not fully aware of them.
The result was much confusion, especially at a time of emergency, and plenty of opportunity for things to go wrong. As well, some forces were not involved in those arrangements.
Early in 1954, the chiefs of the 11 volunteer forces in Wellington, along with the full-time Guelph chief, began a series of meetings to work out a better system. The last of those meetings took place on Oct. 24 in Arthur (and by coincidence, the day on which there were two barn fires).
By then, the chiefs had ironed out the details, and were calling themselves the Mutual Aid Fire Association. A three-tiered system would come into effect on Nov. 2. The first tier were strictly local emergencies, to be answered by the local force responsible for that area. The second tier was for blazes that were out of control, or that were proving difficult for the local force. The third tier was for major blazes.
The new system did not answer all situations, and it would be modified and refined regularly in coming years.
As well, the new system did not solve all the deficiencies in the fire agreements between the townships and neighbouring towns with fire departments. Indeed, problems with those agreements would remain until the amalgamation plan of 1998.
In the case of Nichol Township, fire agreements became a major issue in the municipal elections of 1954. West Garafraxa Reeve Tom Hutchinson considered fire service a priority, and had signed an agreement with Fergus. It called for a standby fee of $500 per year, which at that time was considered very high. In return, Fergus purchased a pumper truck with a large tank, specifically to answer calls in the township.
The value of that agreement, and the new truck, was proven at fire early on the morning of Dec. 5 at Living Springs. An overheated pipe set a partition in a farm house on fire. The water in the tank was adequate to douse the blaze without using the pumping equipment. The time saved undoubtedly save the house.
Nichol Township, in 1954, had an agreement with the Elora force to cover the whole township. Obviously, that was not to the liking of a good portion of the residents, many of whom were closer to Fergus.
More important, the Elora force was equipped with inadequate and outdated equipment: their Bickle fire truck was the newer of their two trucks, but was older than some of the firefighters on the force. They had nothing to compare with the new Fergus vehicle.
Fergus council, anxious to find more money to pay for that new truck, had initiated negotiations with Nichol council earlier in 1954 to establish an agreement to cover a portion of the township. Those talks had not gone well, and at the Nichol nomination meeting, Reeve Bob Foote tried to evade the issue.
Nichol’s electors were not impressed with Reeve Foote’s attitude on the matter, and their inability to have the security of the improved Fergus equipment to defend their property. In the election they tossed the incumbent out, and replaced him with James Burnett to head Nichol council in 1955.
With the new mutual aid agreement of 1954, and an increased ratepayers’ awareness of the importance of modern, efficient equipment as a consequence of the number of fires that year, Wellington’s centennial year of 1954 was a significant milestone in the evolution of the fire service in this county.
*This column was originally published in the Wellington Advertiser on Nov. 19, 2004.
