STATION 232 BY BERNICE HALSBAND, TORONTO FIRE FIGHTER, STATION 232-C
“Pound for pound, it’s the best firehall in the city” – Station 232 Member
THE HISTORY In some areas of Scarborough, the buildings can lack the rich and exciting history of a downtown hall. The cookie-cutter brutalist architecture doesn’t exactly inspire the same warm feelings as the Amsterdam, Colonial Revival or Tudor styles of TFS stations 227, 325 or 314 respectively. Weirdly enough, the term brutalism may conjure unpleasant thoughts for most people at first, but it is actually a style of architecture that was popular with institutions in the 50’s and 60’s. Its etymology hails from the French ‘béton brut’ or ‘raw concrete’. If you were blindfolded and driven to TFS stations 215, 213, or 244 you’d be hard pressed to know which hall you were in unless
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you were familiar with it. I was recently told that station 232, before its renovation at amalgamation, was identical to station 244, with only a few walls remaining from the original building. Many of the downtown halls were built in the late 19th and early 20th century, arguably a much nicer period for architecture. While TFD was already well established by the 1900’s, the first Scarborough firehall, Station 1 at Birchmount and Highview was built in 1925. By the time the second station was built in 1930 TFD already had 10+ halls. When you consider the huge influx in growth for SFD in the 1950’s and 1960’s due to massive housing developments and residential zoning, it’s easy to understand how the historical influence for these cold, uninviting concrete structures were established. Station 232 was built in 1963 and renovated just before amalgamation with funds from the City of Scarborough. The truck was relocated near the Ambulance station at Lawrence and Kennedy, away from the crew that was tucked into a trailer under a bridge. When a call came in, someone had to go get the truck and drive it up to the gate. Another crew member would unlock the gate, the truck would exit and then that person had to lock the gate again. It was quite the temporary routine and a good thing those tracking computers and the 24-hour shift weren’t in place yet! Imagine being placed in a trailer with your crew for 24 hours!?
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