Until 1973, the chief’s family lived in the hall. In a memoir, Shirley Hanic (nee McDonald) of Burnaby whose father Gordon was chief from 1939 to 1954, recalled her bedroom was “the little one at the top of the building by the bell tower. It was blistering hot in the summer and I grew radishes in a box on the window sill.”

During a fire, she would hear the alarm sound outside her parents’ bedroom, the clatter of doors opening, sirens on nearby street corners, and the gong in the tower. Returning to the hall after the excitement, the firemen would eat in their kitchen.

“Some nights, if the temperature was below zero there would be icicles still clinging to their moustaches,” she wrote. “By that time I was back upstairs in bed but if there was fascinating chat about the fire, I would keep my ears open so that I could tell my friends.”

On one embarrassing occasion, while Shirley’s father was out, her mother was frying fish for supper when flames shot out of the pan and spread to the curtains. “The men responded quickly and soon put it out leaving not too much painting and repair to be done. That day we knew there was great advantage to living in a fire hall.”

When Chief Elwyn Owens retired, it ended a long tradition of fire chiefs living in the hall. However, volunteers, mainly those going to Notre Dame and David Thompson University, continued to live there into the early 1980s. Rent was free but in the early days they were pretty much on call around the clock. Chief Harry Sommerville recalled moving in as a volunteer in 1952 and staying two or three years. Chief Simon Grypma says when he started in the 1970s, nine men still lived upstairs.

You can read more of Shirley Hanic’s memories here.