Fire! It’s a shout that makes everyone pay attention and every heart beat faster. Some of us have lived through house or barn fires. The rest of us hope it never happens to us. But have you ever thought what it was like years ago?
The Bromley Historical Society is pleased to host a presentation by Terry Currie, called Fire and Firefighting in the 19th century Ottawa Valley. Mr. Currie will be speaking about the huge problem that fire presented in the settler’s world of wood. He will look at the activities that produced the fire hazard and the changes that came about as a result them.
Mr. Currie was raised on his family’s homestead farm in what was then Fitzroy Township, Carleton County. It was a life of subsistence farming with horses, wood heat and coal-oil lamps. His family were great story-tellers and many evenings were whiled away telling incidents and occurrences from the deep past.
After retiring from teaching, Mr. Currie fulfilled a life-long dream by returning to university to obtain his Master of History degree. His Master’s thesis became his first publicly distributed book, “The Ottawa Valley’s Great Fire of 1870”. He may be best known for his six-part lecture series entitled “A History of the Ottawa Valley,” which he is hoping to produce in book form. Mr. Currie still lives on the family farm and continues his research in the History of the Ottawa Valley.
Please join us Saturday, March 5, at 2:00 p.m. at the Barr Line Community Center, 1766 Barr Line. For more information, call Patricia Van Gelder, 613-646-2599.
