By Carola Vyhnak
The Toronto Star
TORONTO — Lyle Lynde swears he never played with fire as a kid. Never even burned ants with a magnifying glass. “My dad would’ve killed me.”
His dad was Pickering’s fire chief. And Lynde followed in his footsteps.
Today Lynde, 53, is a captain with the city’s fire services, while Don Lynde, 84, has long since retired. Both started their careers decades ago as volunteers.
Not quite a dying breed, volunteer firefighters in the GTA are nevertheless dwindling as urbanization creeps into rural areas, bringing the need for paid, full-time service.
The hamlet of Claremont, off Brock Rd. in north Pickering, is one such example. Its population, just 300 a century ago, has increased tenfold.
“We got to the point where there were too many calls for the volunteers to handle,” says fire inspector Steve Fowlds. And it was increasingly difficult to respond to alarms through traffic-clogged roads and built-up neighbourhoods.
So, last fall, after 100 years of summoning help from people with day jobs — by phone and pager in more recent years — Claremont got its first full-time firefighters. Now there are four in the firehall around the clock.
Last weekend, 20 or so past and present firefighters gathered at the community centre for a ceremony honouring the 100 men who, over the years, replaced the “bucket brigade” of neighbours rushing to douse flames.
A lot has changed, says Lyle Lynde, who has 35 years of service under his belt and made a hobby out of collecting old equipment.
The first helmets were moulded rubber lids like miners wore, he says. “They didn’t offer any protection. They just kept water off the head.”
A handwritten contract in his collection reveals a major purchase from the Bickle Fire Engine Co. in 1924: three trucks worth a total of $5,000 — no tax added in those days.
Medical training, once limited to a one- or two-day St. John Ambulance course, now takes 120 hours and is updated every year.
That training has helped Lynde bring people “back from the dead,” he says. “It’s a good feeling when you help someone. You’re giving something back.”
His father initially had no burning desire to become a firefighter. After World War II, Don Lynde became postmaster in Dunbarton. But with “nothing else to do,” he signed up in 1952, becoming a volunteer firefighter and Pickering’s first fire chief all in one day. He held the job for 33 years.
Lynde remembers rescuing people off rooftops by boat on the Rouge River in the aftermath of Hurricane Hazel in 1954. And he recalls watching helplessly as fire demolished the Tee-Pee Drive-in Theatre on Liverpool Rd. in the 1950s.
“We never had much of a chance. We dumped all our water on it — 500 gallons was all the truck carried — and then we really just watched it burn.” The truck was an old oil tanker they had painted red.
Like Don Lynde, Bill Douglas just fell into the profession. He joined the volunteer corps in 1971 to keep a friend company, thinking he’d soon bow out. “But once I started,” he recalls, “I just loved it.”
Back then, training was two hours every Thursday evening, and volunteers’ wives acted as dispatchers, often alerting the men in the middle of the night.
“It sounds a bit confusing, but it worked,” Douglas recalls. Camaraderie and trust among the firefighters were crucial.
“In those days, you had to be accepted by the other guys. If you didn’t fit in, they got rid of you.”
Not only did he stay, he worked his way through the ranks to become Pickering’s fire chief eight years ago.
Colin McConnell toronto Star Pickering Fire Department Capt. Lyle Lynde and his father Don, 84, a former fire chief, surrounded by firefighting memorabilia. Both started as volunteers.
Copyright 2009 Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd.