Owen Sound Fire Department - In 1850, Village Council met and budgeted for the purchase of buckets to fight fires and appointed thirty men as its first Volunteer Fire Brigade. The village of Sydenham became the Town of Owen Sound in 1857. <br /><br />Around 1876, the town founded the Victoria Fire Department consisting of about 40 volunteers, and for about its first 12 years, was housed in the Town Hall (the area we now call City Hall (until 1887). <br /><br />The Excelsior Fire Department was created in 1890, so named after the insurance company which organized it (common practice around the turn of the 20th century).<br />In 1891, a horse-drawn steam pumping engine was delivered (likely a second-hand engine). On April 13, 1907, the Excelsior Fire Department was disbanded and later that year, a by-law was passed which established the same basic crew, now known as the Owen Sound Fire Department, a paid muncipal fire service operated independently from any insurance company, consisting of four "regular" firemen and ten "on-call."<br /><br />Owen Sound received its first motorized fire truck in 1918, and the last horses were retired in 1939.<br /><br />On June 9, 1923, an American-La France fire pumper truck was shipped to Owen Sound from west Toronto on a C.P.R. car. This vehicle was in full-time service from 1923 until 1954, and then was kept as a reserve piece by the fire department until 1967. The last fire that it attended was the Owen Sound City Hall fire (1961). This challenging fire occurred when Cecil Whalen was Fire Chief, and is documented in THE OWEN SOUND SUN TIMES front page article of Feb. 24, 1961: "City Hall Destroyed: $500,000 Fire Races Through 92-Year-Old Hall, Vaults Hold Fate of Records." The fire occurred on a Friday morning.<br /><br />The book SIRENS ACROSS THE SOUND (by John Christie), provides an excellent account and images of Owen Sound's firefighting history prior to 2006. Elizabeth Wilmott's book, WHERE'S THE FIRE? also provides some information re local firefighting history.