TOWNSHIP DEPARTMENT INFORMATION TOWNSHIP DEPARTMENT INFORMATION 16 Zorra Now | Fall 2026 Zorra Now | Fall 2026 17 Uniondale Fire Station celebrates 50 years of emergency response By Stew Slater The Fire Hall building on Oxford Road 96 – and the emergency response crew it’s home to whose activities in the community are so appreciated – seem now like so much a part of the fabric of the Uniondale/Medina/Lakeside/Harrington district that it might be hard to believe there was a time none of that existed. But it was just over 50 years ago, on Jan. 1, 1976, that the Uniondale Fire Department officially came into being under the direction of inaugural Fire Chief Frank Rietmeyer. Until then, fire protection service for the area was provided by volunteer departments in St. Marys, Thamesford and Embro. Former District Fire Chief and current Zorra Township Councillor Paul Mitchell wrote a history of the department for the 2012 history book “East Nissouri Township: People, Perseverance, Progress.” He recalled how a decision was made at the township level to establish a volunteer Uniondale force and construct a new fire hall, with then ward Councillor Dave Slater “assigned the task of recruiting a group of people interested in and capable of becoming firefighters.” Those “Original 16” – as they’re referred to in an exhaustive scrapbook kept by the man who became the longest-serving among them, Ron King – spent the fall of 1975 training under the direction of Chief Joe Wallace of the Thamesford Fire Department. “Their first truck, a 1974 pumper with a 650-gallon tank,” Mitchell’s account relates, “was purchased from King Seagrave at a cost of $40,000. Keys to the new truck were presented to Rietmeyer at a ceremony on Oct. 25, 1975.” For six months, until the fire hall was completed in June of 1976, the force operated out of the yard and dispatch office of Hutton Transport across the road. During a recent interview, King recalled a Sunday morning fire call when a parked transport truck inadvertently blocked the Uniondale fire truck from exiting the yard. “(Hutton Transport President) Wallace Hutton didn’t get mad very often but he was pretty upset when he learned the fire truck had been blocked in,” King recalled. “It was a good job (Fire Chief) Frank was there because none of the rest of us knew how to drive truck.” The original fire hall had a flat asphalt roof. Subsequent improvements included a sloped steel roof, a radio repeater tower and a 5,000-gallon underwater water tank. But for the most part, the double-bay building has remained unchanged. Mitchell’s account in the East Nissouri history book states that the department’s “first official call was to a chimney fire at the farmhouse of Chester and Joyce West on Highway 19 south of Medina. The second call was to a shop fire at the home of Melville and Win Vannatter in Lakeside.” King remembers that, at the time, the department had two Scott Air-Paks (a selfcontained breathing apparatus manufactured by Scott Safety, a company now owned by 3M) and four of the oxygen cylinders needed for their use. The Uniondale station now has 12 Air-Paks and at least two cylinders for every Air-Pak. Mitchell wrote in 2012 that “the first personal protective equipment for the firefighters consisted of the traditional long black coats, thigh-high rubber boots and thin plastic helmets. These not only provided a minimum of protection but they were clumsy to work in and Current Uniondale District Fire Chief Scott Matheson, left, alongside the longest-serving member of the Uniondale Fire Department, Ron King, who retired from the force in 2021 cold in the winter.” In 1989, a transition began to outfitting the firefighters with more modern gear including helmets made of Kevlar. “Everything to do with the fire department has an expiry date,” current Uniondale Station District Chief Scott Matheson explained during a recent conversation at the fire hall. “That’s something you’ve always got to keep your eye on so that you know there’s a budget for inspections and upgrades and new equipment.” The biggest budget items, of course, are the vehicles. Mitchell wrote in his history book account that the Uniondale “fleet was soon doubled with the addition of a 1947 tanker which had just been replaced at the Thamesford hall. Despite having to replace the 500-gallon water tank, which sprang a huge leak going over some railway tracks, this antique remained in service until 1985 when it was replaced by a new tanker.” Lakeside News correspondent to the St. Marys Journal Argus Ruth Skillings provided some details about this story when she wrote about the retirement in 1996 of inaugural Fire Chief Frank Rietmeyer. “On the very first call (with the newlyacquired, then 31-year-old tanker truck), to a car fire east of Lakeside, while going over the tracks at Lakeside, a big chunk of rust fell off the bottom of the tank. By the time they got to the car, there wasn’t one drop of water left in the tank.” “The original pumper was replaced in 1997 and the second tanker was replaced in 2008 by a 2,000-gallon tandem truck,” Mitchell wrote in 2012. “They were both custom-built for Uniondale by the Metalfab Fire Apparatus Co. in New Brunswick.” Protective equipment definitely has improved since 1976, but King and Matheson agree that the biggest transformation since the Uniondale Fire Department formed is definitely the paging system. Fifty years ago, the 911 emergency dispatch system wasn’t yet in place in rural Ontario. As part of its launch, the department secured a dedicated seven-digit fire-call number in the Uniondale telephone exchange. If someone dialed that number, the phone rang simultaneously in the homes of four firefighters – Marjorie and George Whittaker, Gail and Don Adams, Fieke and Frank Rietmeyer, Teresa and Bill Rouvers – plus the dispatch office of Hutton Transport. In an era before voicemail, there had to be someone present in one of those locations at all times to ensure not just a timely response but a response at all. This bit of trivia speaks to the valuable support provided in those early days to the fire department by two groups of people: management and employees of Hutton Transport; and the wives and family members of the original Uniondale firefighters. King remembers one Sunday morning call when the men in whose homes the first-call telephones were located were either attending a worship service or toiling in their dairy barn. Hutton Transport would also typically have been pretty quiet but employee Bill McKay just happened to be in the vicinity of the dispatch office and heard and answered the call. He also remembers it was always the women in the households receiving the initial fire call who immediately initiated a “telephone pyramid” to inform the rest of the department about the situation – not just that it was happening, but what type of call it was and where it was unfolding. Rietmeyer, interviewed for the St. Marys Journal Argus at the time of his retirement, stated, “the whole family was needed to make the system run smoothly and they never let us down.” It goes without saying, of course, that the dedication and support from spouses and family members of firefighters – and all first responders – continues today as a major factor in the ability of Ontario residents to be confident of timely and professional response to emergencies. In 1983, a pager system was purchased to alert each firefighter when a call came in, through a dispatch service based in Woodstock. They
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