VINTAGE IMAGES SHOW THE BRAVE CITIZENS WHO BATTLED INFERNOS WITH COURAGE BUT WOEFULLY INADEQUATE EQUIPMENT
JUST SO YOU KNOW FOR FUTURE REFERENCE. IF YOU HAVE OLD PHOTOGRAPHS OF MUSKOKA LANDMARKS, BOATS, STEAMSHIPS, RESORTS, LODGES, SPORTS TEAMS, AND OF OTHER REGIONAL SIGNIFICANCE, INCLUDING SNAPSHOTS OF FIRE SCENES, ETC. WE WOULD LOVE TO RE-PUBLISH THEM WITH YOUR PERMISSION, ON THIS SITE. THERE IS A LOT TO BE LEARNED FROM THESE VINTAGE IMAGES, ESPECIALLY OF LOCAL LANDMARKS AND MAIN STREETS. IF YOU WISH TO SHARE THEM, WE CAN COPY THE IMAGES, AND IF YOU HAPPEN TO POSSESS REGIONAL COLLECTIONS, AND EITHER WISH TO SELL THEM, OR DONATE THEM TO FOLKS WHO CHERISH THIS KIND OF THING, PLEASE LET US KNOW. WE ARE ALSO INTERESTED IN EARLY ALGONQUIN PHOTOGRAPHS, AND IF YOU HAVE, BY CHANCE, AN ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPH OF CANADIAN ARTIST, TOM THOMSON, OR OF ANY GROUP OF SEVEN ARTIST IN THE WILDS, OR AT A LAKESIDE LODGE, I'M GOING TO BE TAKING YOU TO LUNCH; MANY TIMES, IF YOU LET ME HAVE A GANDER. IF YOU HAVE BOXES OF OLD PHOTOGRAPHS THAT YOU DON'T WISH TO DISPOSE OF, AND WOULD LIKE TO DONATE THEM TO FOLKS WHO HAVE MANY USES FOR THEM, PLEASE LET US KNOW.
Have you ever wondered about the first responders in pioneer times? From the days of the first inhabitants, hacking away the bush, and hauling away the scattered rock, to clear home and business lots for themselves, in North Falls, later to become Bracebridge. From those first primitive rock fireplaces, without fire-grates, and kerosene lamp-light, the need for fire fighters was particularly urgent. But for most of this time, up to the period an organized brigade was created, it was up to good neighbors to help when cabins and other wood structures caught fire. Which was frequent. It would be an interesting statistic, to know how many structures burned down, and how many residents lost their lives, in the period from 1859, well before the brigade's establishment, versus the figures after its inception. The number would have to factor in, the increase in the town's size, and population, including the accumulation of new buildings, related to the number of firemen, and the equipment available each decade, including the advancements fighting fires, in the first twenty-five years of the new century. It's expected the number of casualties would be less, and the property loss of smaller volume, as time marched on, yet construction was still from materials, and designs that did not seriously retard the spread of a fire once sparked. Improvements that would have made fighting fires less complicated, and much easier to extinguish, having less danger to those intimately collected, including involvement of the members of the fire brigade.
Thanks to the generosity of one of our local history-loving friends, Chris Thompson, of Gravenhurst, kin of the well known Simmons family, well embedded in the chronicle of Bracebridge heritage, we have been able to offer you the above vintage photographs, of the Bracebridge Fire Brigade. These brave souls didn't have an easy job keeping the community safe, especially in the era of oil and kerosene lighting, and of course wood heat from giant stoves, that occasionally belched out a loose spark or two, that might have landed on some other dry woodwork, or flammables stored nearby, in these ever-vulnerable structures. Although it was an incredibly dangerous job, and still is, of course, very little has been written locally, about the major inadequacies of those first pump brigades, the firemen, who had very little training to fight such catastrophic conditions, and the horse-drawn fire fighting equipment, that included hand pump and leather buckets and not much more. There are many references to the fires, some taking out major blocks of stores on Manitoba Street, lumber mills, the former Hess Furniture Company building, at the southeast end the Manitoba Street business community, plus thousands of other calamities, including tragic house fires and car accidents, where there was significant loss of life. Long before the appreciation of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, these firemen had little way of dealing with their emotional experiences after the fact. I remember hearing a story, as told to me by a fireman, about attending a car accident on Highway II, before it was re-routed at the Baysville Road intersection, and having no way of extracting occupants who were still alive, from one of several vehicles involved; and then watching as flames suddenly engulfed the car, because of the volume of fuel from the ruptured gas tank. The firemen, who had been desperately trying to pry the car doors open (before the jaws of life were part of the emergency equipment) didn't have the immediate capability of halting the raging fireball, that was quickly overtaking the interior, with their limited resources available at the scene. He told me it was hard to forget the screaming of the occupants, trying to escape the inferno. "You felt like screaming along with them," he said. "It was a terrible accident scene, and one you never forget, no matter how much time passes."
Very few of the woodframe structures erected in the second half of the 1800's, in the pioneer communities of Muskoka, had any significant fire retarding characteristics, except the home, business, or industry owner's due diligence, to make sure precautions with heating and lighting were taken, to avoid the chance of a spark igniting anything laying about. Stores along main business corridors, were constructed without fire wall installations, and with wood shingles, and woodstove heating, it meant that whole blocks of buildings were vulnerable if fire broke out, even for buildings ten or more lots away from the place of the fire's origin. In only minutes, a fire could take off, across wood-shingled roof-tops, and there was no way for the early fire brigades to do anything more, than make a valiant attempt to stop the flames, by whatever means they possessed, from getting started somewhere else. And when that was proven a failure, they just did what they thought best, and that didn't save many buildings from total destruction. Imagine the impossible task, of passing water buckets hand to hand, in order to fight a two story fire, in connected wooden buildings of the same height, with the likelihood there was some influence of wind to fan the flames.
As a reporter, for the local media, through the 1980's, I attended countless fire calls, including the major Thomas Block Fire, on Manitoba Street, (for a second time in town history), and I marveled at the effectiveness of the firemen, to stop the fire from spreading, once they had state of the art equipment, in the form of the Tele-squirt ladder hose truck, brought in from the Ontario Fire College in Gravenhurst. This was the case as well, where there were no fire walls between some of the buildings, and where there was one, the fire was halted. The aerial assault on the fire, from the Tele-squirt, brought the inferno under control, and eventually extinguished it as a continuing threat. It was a January fire, and happened to be on one of the coldest days of the year. In old photographs of the fire scene decades earlier, the street lamps and remaining store-fronts are heavily encased in what appears to be sculpted ice. Now think about how the early fire brigades had to approach these massive fires, and protect lives and property without losing their own lives, one bucket thrown atop, at a time.
Through the pages of the compiled histories, there are many references to major fires, and resulting casualties, but there is no thorough examination of the fire fighting legacy of the town. There should be. It's a pretty amazing story, that is largely unknown, except for remembrances of specific emergencies, without the continuity of story line, from the earliest bucket brigade to the present. I have written a number of feature stories about major town fires, some I either had to cover, for The Herald-Gazette, or that I researched for inclusion in a more general assignment. Several news stories, contained in scrapbooks kept by local historian and magistrate, Redmond Thomas, and donated to the Bracebridge Public Library, really impacted on me, because I knew all the firemen involved, but had never appreciated the full scope of the tragedy they had faced, trying unsuccessfully to rescue three youth from a full engaged house fire. It made me wonder how they coped with that great loss, having nearly executed the rescue before the floor of the house collapsed, killing the family members and their dog. They also knew the family and the youngsters who perished.
We do need to know more about these local heroes over the centuries, who tried valiantly to keep our community safe, against horrendous odds. I have re-published a blog I wrote a number of years ago, about these courageous first responders, that in my opinion, fits with this brief, illustrated retrospective. Thank you Chris for allowing us to use this wonderful vintage images for this small tribute to the history of the Bracebridge Fire Department.
CHRISTMAS IN BRACEBRIDGE -
THOMAS BLOCK FIRE WAS THE BIGGEST, MOST FRIGHTENING - CALAMITOUS TOWN EVENT I HAD EVER COVERED - NO ONE PERISHED - THANKFULLY
BY THE TIME I SQUISHED MY BEHIND DOWN INTO THAT EDITOR'S CHAIR, OF THE HERALD-GAZETTE, (BACK IN THE EARLY 1980'S), IT WOULD HAVE TAKEN THE JAWS OF LIFE TO SPARE THE CHAIR. FROM MY FIRST YEARS OF UNIVERSITY, I SET MY SIGHTS ON BEING A FUTURE EDITOR. IT TOOK A WHILE, AND SOME HUSTLING TO PROVE MY WORTH, BUT I FINALLY ACHIEVED MY GOAL. I WAS THE BOSS. I HAD THE CHAIR AND DESK TO PROVE IT. DID ANYBODY GIVE A RAT'S ARSE? JUST THE PUBLISHER. HE WANTED ME TO EARN MY KEEP, MOTIVATE THE STAFF, AND CO-OPERATE WITH THE TOUGH COOKIES IN THE PRODUCTION DEPARTMENT. MOST OF ALL, HE DIDN'T WANT TO GET A/ SUED, B/ VOID OF ADVERTISING.
WHEN I DID MAKE MY WAY TO THIS STATION IN LIFE, I HAD EXPERIENCED A PRETTY GOOD WORK-OUT ON THE LOCAL NEWS SCENE, STRETCHING FROM THE TOWNSHIP OF GEORGIAN BAY, MUSKOKA LAKES, AND BRACEBRIDGE. GRAVENHURST WAS STILL IN RANGE, BUT IT WOULD BE YEARS, AND A CHANGE OF EDITOR'S CHAIR BEFORE I BEGAN COVERING ITS MUNICIPAL COUNCIL, AND THE LOCAL BEAT. AS FOR HAVING COVERED ACCIDENT AND FIRE SCENES, I'D CUT MY TEETH ON SOME REAL DANDIES, AND DESPITE THE PROMOTION, I WOULD FOB-OFF AN ACCIDENT OR FIRE CALL ON ANYONE ELSE IN THAT NEWSROOM. MY CONSTITUTION WAS NOT SUITED TO THE KIND OF SCENES FIRST RESPONDERS HAD TO DEAL WITH. IF THERE WAS NO CHOICE, NO ONE TO HAND THE CAMERA TO, I DID WHAT WAS REQUIRED TO JUSTIFY THE PURPOSE OF OUR "NEWS" PAPER. I GOT MY WOBBLY KNEES JUST HEARING THE COMMUNITY FIRE SIREN, OR THE SCANNER WE KEPT IN THE OFFICE FOR EMERGENCY CALLS.
ON THIS BITTERLY COLD WINTER MORNING, SHORTLY AFTER CHRISTMAS-FESTIVITIES, THE CALL CAME OVER THE SCANNER ABOUT A FIRE AT A BUILDING ON MANITOBA STREET, AT CHANCERY LANE. I KNEW IT AS THE THOMAS COMPANY BUILDING, WITH LEGAL OFFICE UPSTAIRS, JUST BEHIND THE HERALD-GAZETTE BUILDING ON DOMINION STREET. I WOULD LATER THAT DAY, BE ABLE TO STAND OUT ON THE ROOF OF THE HERALD BUILDING, TO WATCH THE PROGRESS OF THE FIRE.
EVERY REPORTER WE HAD WAS CALLED OUT TO COVER THIS BREAKING NEWS EVENT. WHILE TWO PHOTOGRAPHERS HEADED DOWN CHANCERY LANE, TO GET SOME FRONT SHOTS OF THE BUILDING, I STOOD AT THE TOP OF THE LANE, JUST BEHIND THE FORMER BRACEBRIDGE TOWN HALL, BECAUSE I NOTICED A LOT OF SMOKE COMING FROM VENTS AT THE SIDE. I TOOK SOME SHOTS DOWN THE SLOPE OF THE LANE, CONNECTING TO THE MAIN STREET, AND SAW A FIRE CAPTAIN I KNEW AT THE BASE. WHEN STAFF FROM THE LEGAL OFFICE OPENED THE SIDE DOOR TO ESCAPE THE BUILDING, THE GLASS IN THE STOREFRONT BELOW, BLEW OUT, THE BURST OF AIR, TOSSING THE FIREMAN ARSE OVER TEA KETTLE, INTO THE ROADWAY. I GOT A SHOT BUT THE SMOKE GOT IN THE WAY OF A CLEAR IMAGE. THE SAME HAPPENED FOR THE PHOTOGRAPHERS BELOW, WHO, AT THAT POINT, DIDN'T KNOW HOW SERIOUS THE FIRE HAD BECOME IN MY ZONE. THE CUSTOMERS AND STAFF HAD JUST GOT OUT OF THE WAY IN THE KNICK OF TIME, BEFORE THE WINDOW EXPLODED.
FROM THIS POINT, INDEED, ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE.
The fire had been manifesting for some time before, inching through the openings above the numerous false ceilings in the store. Somehow, as I had been witnessing, the smoke was venting to the side, not the front, and it had not reached a serious degree of burn, until that morning's store opening. When the front and side doors were opened for customers and clients,I suppose it was acting as a sort bellows on the flames. Customers reported feeling very hot in the store, but the smoke wasn't an issue. It was exciting the building, in a less than obvious place.
After the window blew…..and we saw the fireman had escaped serious injury, I tried to talk to the business owner who was in shock at the time. I chased him up the lane, away from the fire, to get one or two sentences to use……as with events like this, print reporters were often asked to do "voicers" for regional radio and television stations. That's when I noticed the shards of glass that had injured his rear end…..obviously from the explosion at the front of the building. I left the rest to his son…..but it looked painful.
I'd never seen a fire accelerate like this one. It was obvious the fire had gotten into the nooks and crannies, enough to make it twice as difficult for firemen to douse. Within minutes of that window being blown out, the mood changed big-time. Spectators were fleeing and there were sirens everywhere. As we all know about these downtown fires, along the traditional, historic main streets in Bracebridge and Gravenhurst, it couldn't possibly be a simple, one building fire. It was the test to see if there were any firewalls between the old structures. I'm not sure now just how many of the buildings were gutted, but that it stopped before it hit Thatcher Studio. I'm pretty confident it affected three businesses, a medical office, and a law office upstairs. Fortunately no one was seriously injured. Emotional trauma. There was lots of that…..especially when, as historical record in Muskoka towns has documented, you could literally lose the downtown during one out-of-control fire event. There were a lot of gut-wrenching, nervous moments for all stake holders that day.
What was the saving grace, if memory serves, was that a "Tele-squirt" aerial firetruck was loaned by the Fire College, in Gravenhurst, which effectively stopped the progression from consuming other vulnerable buildings. It knocked the flames down, and gave firemen on the ground a better chance of stopping the carnage from heading north, or south, or even leaping west across Manitoba Street. The deep freeze made it a most unfortunate situation for firemen, who were quickly exhausted, carrying around ice on their backs and arms. The cold air and smoke made it hard for everyone to breathe, working on the ground level of the multi-building fire. I can remember spectators who had crept closer and closer over the long day, finding jewelry washing down the road from the shop. Rings were being found frozen in the ice for days after the event.
What had begun at about mid-morning, had carried on through the night….and I remember looking down on the fire scene, from the roof of The Herald-Gazette, and it appearing the mouth of a volcano. There was no roof structure left. Just an expansive, threatening, wavering glow in the sub-zero night air. As we said over and over again that day and night….and for the next week, "at least no one was injured." And you know, the owners of the property, rebuilt the structures that seemed beyond repair….and you can visit them today…..and see no evidence of that great winter fire, of once.
Over the past year, we've had several major fires in downtown Gravenhurst, and although I'm not employed as a reporter any longer, I still got those wobbly knees, and churning stomach, that always went along with the territory. I watched those fire fighters tackle that blaze, with the prowess I recall seeing so many times in the past. On both fires, I saw the terrible odds they were facing….old buidlings, many renovations in the past, all kinds of nooks and crannies for a fire to hide, and the looks of sincere regret……on their faces…..that they couldn't do more to stop the disaster in its tracks. No one can tell me, after my own years of experience covering accidents and fires, that first responders are void of emotion at times of crisis……just because they're used to difficult circumstances. No, they're mortal, and they wish for a better outcome from their efforts. Some times it just isn't possible, and I've identified this, from my own experience, in two recent Gravenhurst blogs.
I heard a smart ass, at the first downtown fire, back in the spring, say "Yup, they haven't lost a foundation yet!" Insensitive bastard.
As a wee footnote to this blog, I remember reporting on a side-bar story, of the fire that claimed Windermere House, a few years back. It was about the emotional state of a few of the firefighters, one who had been in tears, because, in some way, he felt that losing the building was the brigade's fault……that a landmark was lost because they couldn't beat the flames back. Do you think I'm blowing smoke. Tell me then, the last time you heard of a memorial service being held for a building……and for all those who fought the blaze. It was held at the Windermere United Church shortly after the fire, which was begun by the way, during the filming of a Hollywood movie. I was at that service, as my wife is from Windermere. We felt bad for the firemen, that they shouldered responsibility this way….when they had done everything possible to extinguish flames in that very old, very dry resort building. It was clear evidence for me, even though I had seen it in my photographs, showing firemen in action….for years, first responders take it on the chin every time…..and wish there was a positive outcome to each event.
Windermere House was rebuilt, as it was on that promontory, overlooking Lake Rosseau, and it is every bit the historic landmark it once was……but thoroughly modernized. No one had been killed or seriously injured in what could have been much more serious.
As a reporter who shadowed the firefighters of South Muskoka for more than a decade, I have the utmost respect for them, and confidence they will do everything humanly possible to maintain our health and welfare in the event of crisis. But don't think for a minute, they have any choice, about taking their work home with them……and that's something we need to know about their dedication….before we make insensitive comments…….about saving foundations, and such.
Thank you firefighters of Muskoka. Thank you all first responders.
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