Cape Breton's Magazine

Walter Moore, Red River: I was a fire war- den at the time for the Department of Lands and Forests. You know, part-time. They'd give you a pump and one thing and another. We weren't on salary--just if I went on a fire, I got paid. So I was work? ing, I had my pump up at the other end of the district. We were waiting for the fire to hit the district. But when it hit, we couldn't do a blessed thing. We had to make down for the shore, Only way you could get your breath was right down at the ocean. We thought we were going to fight it. We had 4 or 5 pumps. The Park had them there, too. Probably ten men there at the time. The park superintendent was there. It was him that got someone to go around house-to-house and told the peo? ple to get out. Didn't think there was a chance at all. There wasn't. Children would have died. And elderly people. Be? cause you couldn't stand the smoke. We had the pumps hooked up to a couple of brooks, ready to fight that fire--but when the fire hit in, we couldn't do a thing. There was a roar, you would think there were half a dozen trains coming through. It struck two or three houses there, and we couldn't even get near those houses. We went over the bank to the ocean to get our breath. I knew there was nothing we could do, and I walked down the beach clean down to where the church is, When I was coming down the beach, I saw all kinds of animals on the beach, rabbits, I saw a partridge with all the feathers burned off him. It was just wicked. Came up the bank there. We had some more pumps down there. But I came to the conclusion there was just noth? ing at all we could do, so I started home to try to take stuff out of the house. I even threw stuff out the window--never ev? en bothered to put the window up--because I was so sure the house was going to burn. Then we had to leave there, too, and go down to the ocean again. After awhile, me and Clayton Timmons, our nearest neighbour here, said we'd better go up and see what's going on. The smoke had cleared a little then. And I had a big woodpile right back of my house here, and when I got up here the woodpile was afire. But we got it out. And there was another fire right in between our house and Clay? ton Timmons'--and we got that one out. If we hadn't come up from the shore, those houses would have burned. The Park brought the pumps from up above--they couldn't do cape breton historical essays of the 19th Century, of the earlv 20th Centuf IS. Soft cover. 162 pages A VAILABLE A TMANY RETAIL OUTLET'. If you wish lo order by mail, send cheque or money order in the amount indicated to The College of Cape Breton PrcM Agood percentage of the people who come to CentralTrust, come because they get a good percent. We help people appreciate their.money rriore. Some put it in our high interest sav? ings accounts. Some invest in our QIC's and Debentures. Some take advantage of our no charge chequing, our personal loans, business loans or mortgage loans. Some call on us for all of the above. CentralTl-ust IT Mone' apprcciatbn. C.B.HISTORICAL ESSAYS includes "New England's Role in the Underdevelopment of C.B.Island during the French Regime," "Louisbourg: A Foredoomed Fortress," " The Loyalists of C.B.," "Scottish Immigration to C.B.," "Early Coal Mining in N.S.," "Economic Nationalism and Confederation: A Case Study in C.B.," "C,B. a Half Century Ago, "The Making of an Industrial Community: C.B. Coal Towns 1867-1900," "Military Aid to the Civil Power:The C.B. Experience in the 1920's," "The C.B.Coal Industry and the Rise & Fall of the British Empire Steel Corporation."