by Conal MacMillan
Wednesday February 21, 2007

Over a dozen Strathcona County firefighters boarded a bus headed to Winnipeg last Tuesday morning to honour two of their fallen brothers.
Sixteen county firefighters took part in a six-block march Wednesday before taking their seats in the stands of Winnipeg’s 15,000-seat downtown hockey arena with thousands of other servicemen and women from across North America, said union president Craig Macdonald.
“Any time there is a line of duty death we look at it pretty seriously and try to go support another family member,” said Macdonald. “It’s not just a career; it’s not a profession; it’s a lifestyle.”
While the underlying dangers of the job start to sink in after attending a memorial for any fallen brother, it doesn’t make Macdonald second-guess his profession. It reinforces that he is there for a reason.
“You hope that science and technology and training protect you the best they can,” said Macdonald, who is also a member of the Strathcona Firefighters’ Honour Guard.
In recent years, the honour guard has travelled to memorials in Yellowknife and Calgary.
This time, the Strathcona crew were honouring two Winnipeg captains who died battling a house fire in that city’s St. Boniface area the previous Sunday night.
Before the county firefighters boarded the bus outside Station 1, Todd Nixon, the officer of the guard who couldn’t make the trip, said they had been in contact with their Winnipeg brethren since the tragedy had occured.

“We spoke to them on the Monday morning and offered our assistance in anything they needed,” Nixon said. “It’s a pretty small family, especially in Canada.”
The county firefighters, along with five from Edmonton, rolled into Winnipeg at midnight. They had enough time to catch a few hours of sleep in a Holiday Inn before a 5:30 a.m. Wednesday wakeup call to get to the Winnipeg Convention Centre where they were placed in line before the mid-morning march, Macdonald said.
The line snaked around the entire convention centre and was long enough to stretch the entire six blocks to the MTS Centre where the memorial was held, he added.
The march itself was surreal, Macdonald said. The first half-block was spent trying to get in sync with each other in the -40 C temperature to put on a good show for the people who were lining the streets.
“They were standing out in the cold, it’s cold for us, but soon those thoughts go away and you can’t even feel the cold anymore,” Macdonald said. “All you could hear was the unison sound of the boots in the crisp, cold air.”
After about two blocks the Snowbirds flew over the procession led by a pumper truck followed by two Winnipeg firefighters carrying the helmets of the two captains.
The Snowbirds performed the Missing Man formation, which Macdonald said made the hair on the back of his neck stand up when he saw it.
But the most emotional moment was when one of the captains’ daughters, pregnant with what would have been his grandson, took to the stage to read a letter she had written to her father.
“Once she started to read that letter there wasn’t a dry eye in the place,” he added. “You looked around and no one was holding anything back.”
After the ceremony there was a gathering back at the convention centre for the servicemen and women to socialize with each other before returning home.
The county firefighters jumped back onto the bus at around 2 p.m. Wednesday afternoon, Macdonald said.
“It was tough ride on the way home. Everyone was really tired,” Macdonald said.
They didn’t pull into the Park until around 6 a.m. Thursday morning, about 45 hours after they had left Tuesday.
To top the trip off, five or six of them had to be at work for 8 a.m. that morning. But they did their best to sleep from Saskatoon in, Macdonald said.
cmacmillan@sherwoodparknews.com