Dawson City firefighter marks 45 years on the frontline

Gerry Crayford's first big call as a volunteer firefighter in Dawson City, Yukon, was to the Bonanza Hotel, engulfed in flames.

"That one was quite awesome," he recalled. "I remember thinking, 'what the hell am I doing here?" 

That fire was more than four decades ago, and since then Crayford has battled plenty of other fires in Dawson, both big and small. This week, the Dawson City Fire Department honoured him for his 45 years of volunteer service.  

A post on the fire department's Facebook page describes his work as "an amazing achievement and dedication to our community."

Crayford — now the deputy chief — first signed on as a volunteer firefighter in the 1970s without giving it much thought, he says. A few guys he worked with were already part of the department, and one was the fire chief.

"So I thought, well, I might as well join them. I'm at work with them," he said. "I just thought that's something I should do."

His early days as a firefighter were often intense and exhausting, he said. "You lost a lot of sleep because we had a lot of fires.

Often, he remembered, his team was fighting fires in older buildings, with structural issues and sawdust for insulation. "You could really get into a deep-seated long fire, it required a lot of water and a lot of time to take it on."

It was hard and sometimes emotionally difficult work in the small, tight-knit community.

"I've known some individuals that personally had a tragic situation. And you just, you know, look after them and make sure they're well taken care of," he said.

Still, Crayford says he's never had a really bad moment as a firefighter, where he might be forced to rethink what he was doing. 

"With the fire department, you know, basically what you've done is taken on another armload of friends," he said, adding that the work has always been rewarding.

"A small fire just becomes a social gathering with a little work involved."

Even after 45 years, he's not quite ready to hang up his hat. He recently told his fire chief that he might have to, though, as his eyesight's not what it used to be and his shoulders "are pretty well shot."

"So I said, 'well, I'm not gonna be much good to you.' He said, 'oh, you can stand outside and give orders and holler at people,'" Crayford said.

"And I said, 'well, I've been doing that for a while, that doesn't sound so bad.'"