It’s not just another brick in the wall for the Fernie Fire Department as members salvaged 100-year-old building material for a memorial in the new fire hall.
Brendan Morgan, Fernie Fire Chief, says firefighters salvaged bricks and the brass pole from the previous building’s memorial.
“We pulled the wall down and separated all of the bricks and put them on a pallet. We’re going to store them and when the new fire hall is built, we want to possibly do the exact same thing,” said Morgan.
“We’d like to build our own wall, maybe in the reception area or somewhere else. With that, we also have the original brass pole that firefighters slid down from the 1904 building that we will also try to implement into that memorial.”
Morgan says this continues a tradition from the previous building.
“In 1990, when the original fire hall from 1904 was no longer able to be used, the firefighters moved into an old tire shop and converted it into a fire hall,” said Morgan.
“They took some of the bricks from the original 1904 fire hall and built a face wall against one of the interior walls. Behind it, they wrote some messages on the wall, put some pictures behind the bricks and laid the bricks all the way to the roof.”
Morgan says this is a way to honour the legacy of the fire service who protected the community since the devastating fires of 1904 and 1908.
“The fire service is all about tradition and I think this is a good way to keep that going by simply having these bricks that were used in fire halls in the past,” said Morgan.
“We can use this to remember the firefighters from the past and the service they gave. It gives you a little bit of a reminder of that every time you see the wall.”
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