Long time retired and former Prince George Fire Chief Ed Parent was born in Cranbrook in 1934.
At the young age of 16, Ed boarded a bus headed to Prince George on a trip to visit his father.
It was minus 40 when he arrived at the bus depot on Fourth and Dominion; he wearing a suit and dress shoes. All he knew was that his dad lived somewhere on Tenth Avenue so he started to walk; when he got to Tenth Avenue he started to knock on doors. He went from house to house inquiring about his dad and finally he came to the home of Prince George-born Carol Strugala and her parents who helped him locate his father.
Neither one of them knew it at the time but in three years Ed and Carol would marry and stay married for the next 63 years. Here is their story in a nutshell:
Carol, born in 1936, is a true Prince George-born pioneer. Her father Louis Strugala was from Poland and her mother was from Oregon. Her grandparents traveled all the way from Oregon to Vanderhoof in a covered wagon and secured a contract cutting railroad ties for the railroad.
Carol grew up and was educated in Prince George. She worked for awhile for the phone company and part of her job was dispatching the firefighters. She always wanted to be a nurse but in 1953 she married Ed Parent instead. She chose to work in the home until her children were all in school and then she worked part-time at the McLeod Stedman store. Ed joked and said, "I saved her from having to clean bed pans."
Ed worked at the sawmill in Summit Lake and two years later they moved to Bear Lake where they lived for a short while. He was operating a trim saw and lost a finger at the age of 19 and one year later they moved into Prince George.
He took a diesel course in Edmonton and soon learned that there were no local jobs for diesel mechanics. He got a job at Bryant Motors and later moved on to the Pontiac service garage on the corner of Fifth and George Street.
When he saw a city job posting looking for full-time firefighters he applied and was hired in November of 1956. He only intended to stay until spring and 36 years later after a very successful career with the fire department he retired and opened a store at Norman Lake. He retired from the store 13 years later after suffering a broken back in a tree-falling accident.
Ed and Carol have four children: Carolyn (Tom) Bulmer, Wendy (Ron) Reimer, Ed Jr. (Holly) and Paul (Cindy), all of whom have children of their own. They have seven grandchildren, eight great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren. Their family is and always will be the centre of their universe.
Carol enjoys gardening and her flowers and they are both content spending their weekends out at the lake.
I asked Ed to go back in time and give a brief history of a few of the fire chiefs who came before him.
He told me that E. B. London was the first full-time fire chief and that he served from 1915 to November of 1916 followed by Fire Chief J. C. McKenzie and Dave Fraser. August Dornbierer was appointed fire chief in1950 and he served until 1964. After August Dornbierer retired his son Harold took over the position from 1964 to 1985. Ed took over as fire chief from September 1985 to 1992.
He said, "The first 18 years on the job were the most interesting. When I started with the department I was paid $220 a month and that included my uniform which consisted of five shirts, a pair of boots and two pairs of black pants.
"We didn't have the equipment and safety gear back then that they have now. All of our homes were wired with bells so we were expected to live as close to the fire hall as possible. B.C. Tel ran the wires down the poles and into our homes. These bells would ring if there was a house fire or if they needed more manpower at a fire. We didn't have radios like they do now; if there was a fire we had to drive down to the fire hall to find out where the fire was and then go from there. The horn that was connected to the emergency phone was an old foghorn from a ship, so when the phone rang for a fire it scared the heck out of you. The controls for the fire bells were in a box with a magneto in it and a crank on the side that had to be turned to activate it. The siren on top of the hall was an old air-raid siren that could be heard all over the city.
"Besides being used for fires the siren was set off every night for the 10 p.m. curfew. That practice started back in the 1950s and was carried on until around 1960.
"The first fire hall was located at Fourth and George Street; in 1936, the department moved over to the Ritz Keifer building on George Street, also known as the Ritz Keifer Hotel. In fact the devastating fire at the Ritz Keifer building was the worst fire I ever battled but that is another long story. It was 50 below and every half hour we had to leave the fire just long enough to put on dry clothes and have a quick cup of coffee. What a great and brave team of firefighters we had battling that fire.
"In 1950 the department moved to the site where city hall is now located. I remember the first day I went to work; it was somewhere around 32 below zero. My workplace was an old and very cold army building with big six-by-eight windows all across the back that were dirty to boot. I remember the handcarts from days gone by, a KB9 international open cab fire truck and a GMC pumper truck which carried 500 gallons of water, fire extinguishers and hose equipment capable of pumping 300 gallons of water per minute at 250 pounds per square inch all of which I had to learn to operate. There was also an old 1942 Army ambulance that we used to respond to accidents with.
"The hall had a small alarm room which also served as a coffee room with a small chesterfield in it. There were weigh scales on that side of the building as well as all the sirens and radio controls in one little room. We weighed all the trucks in town, the moving vans and the coal trucks. Coal was a big thing in Prince George in those days. Most of the commercial buildings in town used coal for heat and most homes used either wood or coal in their heaters and stoves. In 1957 the fire department moved to their present location at Dominion and Seventh Avenue and 59 years later they are still in the same location.
"History has it that in 1952 the fire chief warned meddling motorists not to follow the fire truck. In 1958 we had the same problem with cars following too close so the chief and the police set up a trap to catch them. There used to be a road that ran off of Vancouver Street along side of the slough where the Parkwood Shopping Centre is now located; that road ran back to a pig farm which is now Masich Stadium. The road was narrow and you could not pass so as planned, we drove the fire truck down the road with lights and siren going. The fire truck chasers followed and so did the police. They must have handed out 15 tickets or more that day. That took care of the problem for a long time after that.
"To conclude, I would just like to add one more thing that was a real coincidence at the time and that I still think about. J. Assman died in the line of duty in October 1956. He drove the fire truck to a call in the 1800 block of Seventh Avenue, got out of the truck to start the pump and he collapsed and died. Fred Burr died in the line of duty as well in 1960 responding to the same address and the same house in the 1800 block of Seventh Avenue. I still find that very spooky."
