historic oak bay
Dousing the flames 75 years of firefighting in Oak Bay Story by SUSAN LUNDY
As the Oak Bay Fire Department celebrates 75 years, Tweed decided to dig up some historical highlights. Most of the information was gleaned from Fire Chief E.G. Clayard’s personal scrapbook (provided by the affable volunteers at the Oak Bay Archives) and Reeve George Murdoch’s book The History of the Municipality of Oak Bay, which can be found online at oakbay.ca.
Above: Newspaper clipping, showing fire hall construction. Following page: Historic photos found in Fire Chief E.G. Clayard’s scrapbook.
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1906-12: For the first six years following incorporation, Oak Bay was without fire protection, and there existed no fire apparatus in the community. 1912: An agreement was finally signed with the City of Victoria to provide fire protection to Oak Bay from the new Duchess Street fire hall for $150 per month. “This arrangement did not prove entirely satisfactory to Oak Bay,” writes Murdoch. “Each year, the city raised the price . . . and there were occasions when a fire occurred in Oak Bay that the Duchess Street equipment was either at city fire headquarters for drill purposes or filling in while the headquarters’ equipment was engaged at a fire in the city.” 1937: On Monday, Oct. 25, the Victoria Daily Times reported that Oak Bay would get its hall “as a result of a vote of Oak Bay ratepayers of more than nine to one in favour of a $36,000 money by-law to finance the installation of a municipal fire department.” A building site was eventually found on Monterey Avenue “where a jog in the road makes it St. Ann Street.” P. Leonard James — who designed the municipal hall (1912), St. Mary’s Church (1911) and the Oak Bay SUMMER 2013
Grocery (now Oaks Restaurant) — was named architect for the project. 1938: The new hall was completed in March, 1938 at a cost of $11,720. Two former members of the Victoria fire department, E. G. Clayards and J. Newall, were appointed as chief and deputy chief, and on their recommendation, eight firemen were named. Firemen were to receive $90 per month but it was decided to put the men to work cleaning up the hall at a temporary rate of $60. According to Murdoch, “Shortly before the date set for opening the hall, it was discovered that personnel was one short of minimum requirements and in order to function within the budget, each of the eight men had to forego 10 dollars of their agreed wages, enabling the extra man to be hired. On May 13, 1938, the Oak Bay Fire Hall was formally opened in a ceremony that included the Honourable T. D. Patullo, Premier of British Columbia. At its start, the fire district covered four and a quarter square miles and included a population of 7,000. “It will have little to fear from industrial conflagration,” reported a newspaper clipping in Clayard’s scrapbook. “Most of the structures are family dwellings — some of the finest in the Lower Mainland . . . there are less than half a dozen buildings over three stories high, and much of the territory is vacant, a considerable portion owned by the Hudson’s Bay Company. It does however hold out quite a menace for grass and brush fires, the type of blaze most common in the municipality.” Equipment at the new fire hall included two BickleSeagrave triple combination pumpers with booster tanks, hose carrier and three ladders of 18, 24 and 36 feet.