The groundbreaking ceremony for the new hall happened April 7, at 6:30 p.m.
The brigade raised more than $200,000 over the last seven years to build the new hall, which will also include a small community hall.
The brigade’s current hall would have required several upgrades in the next few years, and Wanup’s amalgamation into the city of Greater Sudbury had de-centralized the hall’s location.
Moving to a new site and building a new hall was the better choice, Ian Plummer, a member of the brigade’s board of directors, explained.
For the brigade’s fire chief, Gord Hall, the move is necessary.
“A lot of our calls are on Highway 69,” he explained. The location of the new hall puts the brigade almost right beside a ramp onto the highway.
The board applied for four different government grants to help them raise the money to build the new hall, but were denied all four.
In one case, the fire brigade didn’t have an expensive enough project to qualify. According Plummer the brigade was “well under” the $750,000 requirement to qualify for assistance. And once changes were made to the plans in order to raise them above the minimum amount, the grant had no money left, he said.
A second grant was denied because “they didn’t have the money either,” Plummer said.
The last two grants were denied outright, as the grants didn’t cover fire services. Fire services are not eligible for the grants because they are a municipally-funded service.
(We’re) saying ‘the heck with it.’ We’ll do it ourselves.
Ian Plummer,
member of the Estaire-Wanup Fire Brigade board of directors
“We’re not a town,” Hall said. He said cities receive funding from the government to help with fire services, but because the brigade doesn’t serve an incorporated city or town, the volunteer brigade can’t access those avenues.
“(We’re) saying ‘the heck with it,’” Plummer said. “We’ll do it ourselves.”
And except for a fire truck provided by the Ontario Fire Marshal’s office, the brigade has done it themselves.
Since its incorporation in 1980, almost all of the brigade’s equipment, including its current fire hall and a pumper truck, have been paid for with money raised through fundraising. Training is also provided through fundraising, though many trainers agree to work for free since it is a volunteer department, Hall explained.
Some of the brigade’s fundraising includes a fish derby on Nepewassi Lake and a music festival in August, a yard sale in September, a Christmas dance, a Spring Fun Fair in March, Nevada tickets, and an annual calendar. They also act as floor-helpers at Boardwalk Bingo.
The brigade’s 14 or so volunteers receive no pay for practice or attending the scene of a fire or accident, Plummer noted. In several outlying Greater Sudbury communities, volunteer fire fighters receive pay when called out to incidents, or during training.
The volunteer brigade is based in Estaire, but covers the townships of Secord, Burwash, Laura and Servos.
And while the brigade’s name includes Wanup, the volunteer department’s coverage area doesn’t include the village since it became part of the city of Greater Sudbury. The brigade is under contract with the city to cover the area, however.
“We get there faster,” Plummer explained.
The volunteer brigade also accepts women.“Our deputy chief is a woman,” he said. “She is a nurse at the Sudbury hospital.”
A high amount of the calls received by the brigade are related to accidents on Highway 69. The knowledge learned during these incidents has won the brigade and its members accolades province-wide.
The Estaire-Wanup Fire Brigade was the reigning northeastern Ontario auto-extraction competition champion for three years straight during the 2000s. Hall is a province-wide specialist in the field and provides training in auto-extraction across the province.
The brigade intends to build the “shell” of the hall — walls, roof, windows and doors — with the money they have raised so far, so they can move its two trucks in.
Once they have done that, they intend to sell the old hall, and continue to fundraise to finish the building and buy new equipment as necessary.
