Description
a-b photos of Alex Gillespie recieving plaque for 32 years of service. Back of photos stamped North Bay Nugget. Lorne Hicks is on the right, Alex Gillespie is on the left.
c-i Airport terminal opening ceremony in 1963. Images stamped with North Bay Nugget, Barrie Davis.
c- Mayor (1961-1965) Cecil Hewitt.
d- Jack Pickersgill, Minister of Transport
e- To the left of the man in the centre is Lorne Hicks, to the right is Jack Pickersgill.
f- Lorne Hicks reaching out his hand to his wife Anne Hicks coming through the door.
g- Lorne Hicks in fur hat
i- Jack Pickersgill and Cecil Hewitt to the right of man cutting ribbon.
j- m Series of photos of Alex Gillespie recieving 27 years of service plaque. Photo L identifies Hicks (airport manager), Chief Strang (North Bay), L.W. Medar (D.O.T.), Chief Cosgrove (Widdifield), Saule, An W/O Armstrong (RCAF Chief).
Lorne Hicks on right
k Lorne Hicks centre
l- Lorne Hicks on left
m- Lorne Hicks and Four Firemen Standing in Front of A Fire Truck, circa 1965. The photo is from 1965 or 1966.
Information below provided by Captain Doug Newman.
The vehicle is a Sicard airport crash truck (notice the name on the front) fitted with a Pyrene foam pumping
system.
Tanks behind the cab held 833 imperial gallons (3800 litres) of water and
120 gallons (550 litres) of foam. To extinguish a fire, the two, mixed
together, were shot out of the nozzle seen directly over the cab.
Sicard is a Canadian company, better known for making snowblower trucks,
such as those seen in cities, on highways and at airports.
It belongs to the air force base, then called Royal Canadian Air Force
Station North Bay. On the side of the truck, above the large white number
3 is the RCAF badge. The small set of numbers below the badge is its RCAF
identification number; every car, truck, etc. in the RCAF had its own
number. The "65" at the end of the ID number stand for 1965.
The driver is RCAF as well.
The truck is very important in the history of the North Bay Airport.
RCAF Station North Bay was officially born in 1951. Because it was a
flying base, it built its own fire hall, which opened for business the
following year, manned by RCAF firefighters. They responded to airfield
airplane crashes and accidents--both civilian and military--as well as
attending to fire calls on the rest of the base.
The air base had jet aircraft stationed at its part of the airfield (which
was shared side-by-side with the airport), and military jet planes from
other parts of Canada and the world would be flying in and out of North
Bay. Because of the type of fuel used in jet airplanes, a fire was
extremely difficult to extinguish with just water. But a special foam
invented in the UK would do the job. Hence the foam truck.
To give you an idea of how busy the RCAF Station North Bay fire hall could
become in that era, in just the 31 days of May 1954 alone its fire crews
responded to 59 fire calls--49 of these were stand-by crash calls for the
airfield. A stand-by crash call means that an airplane is experiencing
trouble and a crash is possible; so the fire crews would don their
firefighting gear and jump into their trucks, ready to race out if a crash
happened. (The other 10 fire calls that May were for incidents somewhere
else on the base.)
The fire hall had a foam truck before the one seen here, and others after
this particular truck was retired from service.
The big deal about the foam trucks, other than firefighting, was four-fold:
a. It meant that North Bay's airport was allowed under Canadian federal
regulations to handle any airplane in the world. Jet airliners could
land here. Jet cargo airplanes, including the biggest in the world,
could land here. This ability, of North Bay's airport able to
receive any aircraft in the world, still exists today.
b. Which could not happen at Sudbury, since its airport did not (and I
believe still doesn't) have a foam truck. Therefore Northern Ontario
companies selling large pieces of equipment, such as mining equipment
manufacturers, to other parts of Canada and other countries did their
business through North Bay's airport. And airliners with suspected
or real problems could land here--but not at Sudbury--such as an
airliner from Japan in the late 1990s en route to the U.S. that
stopped here; once its situation was sorted out, it continued on its
way.
c. NASA used North Bay for research, such as of the earth's atmosphere
and, specifically to airfields, the braking of aircraft on runways in
winter conditions--what it takes to stop an airliner size airplane on
snow and on ice. No foam truck, no NASA research.
d. NASA selected North Bay as an emergency landing field for its Space
Shuttle, when the spacecraft were flying.
None of the above would have happened if a foam truck wasn't here.
In addition, all of the airshows North Bay has enjoyed
past and present would never have happened without a foam truck at the
airfield. This especially includes in 1986 when the French, Italian and
Canadian military aerobatic teams performed at North Bay on the August long
weekend--a spectacular event no one who viewed the performances has ever
forgotten.
In the 1990s the disposition of the base fire hall and its firefighting
vehicles became problematic. On Christmas Day 1991, the Cold War, the
primary raison d'etre of the air force base, ended. Summer 1992 all of the
military airplanes were posted elsewhere in Canada, and all of the military
airfield assets--like hangars and a fuel depot--were either sold off or
demolished.
The fire hall and its vehicles were to be transferred to the City of North
Bay, and North Bay firefighters take over the job of airfield firefighting.
First Problem: few if any of the city firefighters had training in
airplane crash firefighting, including with the foam truck.
Second Problem: The number of base firefighters was enormous compared to
the city's. In 1994 the air force base had 41 firefighters. The city had
72, who had to cover the whole of the City of North Bay. Handing over
airfield firefighting meant the city now had to also cover the
responsibility of the base's 41 fire personnel.
The foam truck at this time had been owned by Transport Canada, but
operated by the Department of National Defence. In 1995 the City of North
Bay bought it for one dollar. Although the city hired more firefighters,
it found it could not man the fire hall to the same degree that the base
had. All city firefighters stationed at the fire hall were reassigned
elsewhere in the city. The decision was made that--in the event of an
airplane crash or other similar event on the airfield--the fire crews at
the McKeown fire station (across from Canadian Tire) would race up to the
fire hall; man the fire trucks there including the foam truck; then race
out to the incident on the airfield.
This added up to 15 minutes extra time to get to a crash. As a result the
federal government downgraded the airport, that it could only receive
medium to small jets. No longer was North Bay allowed to receive any
airplane in the world.Date(s) of Creation
1950 - 1963
