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September 16, 2015
Inside
Lake Country Firefighters are featured in this edition of the Calendar. Meet your firefighters starting on page ...........................
‘Dire’ need for new fire hall
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KEVIN PARNELL
Open Air concert founder will hand off organizing duties to a new district cultural coordinator ...............................
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Flyers ■ Home Depot ■ Coopers ■ Bresciani Window Cleaning ■ Bulk Barn ■ Jysk ■ Popeyes Fitness ■ Rona ■ Safeway ■ Save On Foods ■ Shoppers Drug Mart ■ Staples
Lake Country volunteer firefighter Peter Whitfield says there are a lot of good memories in the old Winfield Fire Hall. He should know. In the late 1970s Whitfield’s father was among the volunteer firefighters who built the last major addition on the aging building, adding to the original two-bay Winfield Fire Hall, built in 1959. “There’s a lot of history in this building,” said Whitfield, a member of the Lake Country Fire Department for 15 years. “I’ve been here for so long and I know so many firefighters who have retired and helped to build this. It’s been a great hall. And it will be sad to see it go. But it’s slowly falling apart. There comes a time when you need a safer and better place. It has served it’s purpose.” The Winfield Fire Hall is the nerve centre and main firehall of the
Today at the Winfield Fire Department, modern firefighting vehicles are kept under temporary shell covers just big enough. three in Lake Country. The halls work together with the Winfield location housing the administration in a separate building and operating the two satellite halls in Oyama and Carr’s Landing. It began as an operation that fielded just nine calls in its first year. But now the Winfield Fire Hall has turned into a high tech operation that had 451 calls in the first six months of 2015 alone and can have as many as 1,000 in an average year. Most of the district’s equipment is also housed at the Winfield location but some of it has to be left outside due to space. Last winter the district’s water tender had to be kept outside but it suffered some weather damage prompting
Aly
AN ADDITION to the original Winfield Fire Hall was built in 1977. the LCFD to purchase a large tent to park the tender under, to shield it from the winter elements. It’s these kind of
Band-Aid solutions that have kept the hall going over the years. But as the call volume rises, as there is more residential growth and more tourists
CONTRIBUTED
on area roads and lakes, it’s becoming more and more evident the LCFD needs a new building. “A firehall in the Winfield area is dire at
this point,” LCFD fire chief Steve Windsor told Lake Country council at its meeting on Sept.1 “We’re at a point where we will be bringing forward a recommendation on how to move the firehall project ahead in the 2016 budget to get some design work to move it ahead.” It’s not the first time the district will try to move forward with a new firehall project. In 2008 Lake Country held a referendum asking residents to approve the borrowing of $4 million for a new fire hall. Held in conjunction with a municipal election, the fire hall was turned down by a vote of 675 to 625. However voter turnout was just 19 per cent as SEE FIRE HALL 3
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