Fire Station 7-4, 10665 Islington Avenue,

1968 - 2013

(photo by Chas Amedeo – February 2014)

The following outline of the history of the Kleinburg Fire Station has been captured from a conversation with Ken Sanderson and Dave Share, who both served as volunteer Fire Captains.

The first meeting of a group of Kleinburg residents to discuss the need for a fire hall took place on June 28, 1966. The first phase of construction of the Kleinburg Estates sub- division was already underway south of McMichael. This was a large addition to the small village and raised concern that Kleinburg needed its own fire hall.

Following further discussions a letter was sent to the Town Council on January 23, 1967, by Gord King, Secretary of the Kleinburg volunteers, requesting the construction and incorporation of a fire hall to be manned by volunteers. In July 1967 the Township purchased a piece of farmland, opposite Bell Court, for $4,000 and approval was obtained from the Municipal Board to change the zoning.

The start of construction was delayed while objections from residents in the immediate vicinity were addressed at a meeting of the Vaughan Fire Committee and the residents. There were concerns about noise disturbance and the original plan was for the Fire Hall

1 to face Islington Avenue. The residents didn’t want a view of a building with bright red doors, so the building was turned ninety degrees. The egress was still onto Islington Avenue so the fire trucks had to make a hard right turn after exiting the hall.

Construction proceeded quickly together with recruitment and training of the volunteers. The notice calling for volunteers was posted in the Watson’s General Store and Post Office, 10483 Islington Avenue, and Ken Sanderson was one of the first to sign up. In January 1968 the hall was operational and the first calls were answered.

Initially the hall was very basic consisting of two bays for fire trucks, a hose drying tower and a washroom. Bench seats and hooks for turn-out gear were located on the east side of the bays, where they remained for the life of the station.

In 1971 a flat roofed addition was added on the east side, designed to add a second floor if required in the future (that didn’t happen). This single room addition functioned as the Captain’s office, kitchen, lunchroom, training room, storage for training materials, etc.

The first Captains were Bob Arnold and Ken Sanderson, who got the station going. The station staff was twenty.

In the first year of operation, 1968, a total of eighteen calls were responded to with the first one being to a rubbish fire in Kleinburg Estates, the new addition to the village. The calls increased to thirty-four in 1969.

When the fire hall was established its district (primary response area) stretched from the King-Vaughan Line to the north, Highway 50 and Caledon/King Townline to the west, Rutherford Road to the south and Highway 400 to the east.

At times they were called to support other fire halls. One of the early ones was to a grass and crop fire in Thornhill that stretched from Highway 7 south to Steeles Avenue. Later on they attended a major barn fire on Yonge Street.

Another memorable event was the explosion of the Trans Canada gas pipeline near to the station to the northeast in May 1978. This produced a huge crater with a long section of the exposed pipeline split as though it had been torn. The damage didn’t extend past the East as the pipeline was encased in concrete beneath the river. Luckily no one was injured by the blast.

On Canada Day July 1, 2008 they attended a fire at Hayhoe Mills, Pine Grove. This was a huge fire that destroyed the main part of the mill. Chlorine gas was one of the chemicals used in processing the wheat and due to the risk that it presented all the residents in the immediate vicinity were evacuated. These included the one hundred and fifty occupants and staff of Pine Grove Lodge retirement home and they weren’t allowed to return until two days later.

2 CPR expertise was one of the required skills for the volunteers with regular refresher training to ensure the skill was maintained. The life-like training dummies were equipped with print-out devices recording the volumes and intervals of the breaths applied by the trainee and one of the training officers was an absolute stickler for perfection. If the height and spacing of the printout breaths wasn’t perfect repeat after repeat was required until perfection was achieved.

The number of volunteers that responded to calls depended on the timing in relation to their working hours, as they had regular jobs. Those that worked locally were the key responders for Monday-Friday 9:00 - 5:00. All were motivated to volunteer as a service to the community.

In the early years attendance for two hours training every second Monday was required. As the complexity of the firefighting equipment increased and the range of chemicals that night be encountered expanded, together with improvements in first aid/medical procedures the required training time increased to three to four hours every Monday. Routine maintenance checks and cleaning of the fire trucks was the responsibility of the volunteers.

The early trucks had two seats in the enclosed cab and another two exposed jump seats. Additional crew would ride on the tailgate if necessary (later this became an unacceptable Health and Safety practice). Modern fire trucks have two seats in the cab with another four, also enclosed, in the crew cab behind for a total crew of six per truck. Volunteers were allowed to use non-emergency green flashing lights in their vehicles when they were responding to the station.

The first truck assigned to the station in 1968 was a 1947 GM. The last truck was a 1994 Volvo. It had been at the Kleinburg station since 1998 and had clocked over 100,000 kms.

On one call two volunteers fell through a roof but weren’t badly injured. Ken Sanderson found a weak spot in a floor on another call and ended up on the floor with one leg though the hole that he had made. Again scrapes and bruising, but not too bad.

In recent years the majority of calls were medical emergencies. They also attended traffic accidents that included some fatalities.

The volunteers participated in many charitable events and fund raising activities. With a fire truck and Sparky, the Fire Department mascot, they were a major part of the children’s parade at the annual and for many years they ran a parking lot for the festival raising money for children’s charities. Another regular event was fire trucks and the field support truck in attendance at the CP Christmas Train in Nashville for the food drive.

3 Ken Sanderson retired as Captain in 1994 and Dave Share replaced him as Captain. Other Captains had included Bob Arnold, Don Verdin and Allan Wilkie as well as Assistant Captains James Arnold and Steve Lee.

As developments expanded Kleinburg the numbers of calls increased. From 2000 to 2005 an average of 400 calls per year were answered with 550 calls in 2005, still with a staff of around twenty.

The Kleinburg station became a training base for young volunteers targeting a full time fire fighting position. Some moved into rented accommodations in the village to become volunteers and earn the valuable experience. Over the years nearly sixty volunteer firefighters from Kleinburg became full time fire fighters.

One of their last duty days was the ice storm on December 22, 2013 when Kleinburg lost power for almost twenty-four hours with other parts of the city being without power for up to ten days. That day they responded to thirty calls and ran generators at the fire hall to keep it operational.

After forty-seven years of dedicated service to the community, volunteer firefighters should be proud and the residents of Kleinburg and the City of Vaughan say “thank you”.

Roger Dickinson March 2014

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