Community support 'fantastic' as Elizabeth Fry Society relocates following fire

Just one day following a fire that devastated its main Elm Street office, the Elizabeth Fry Society in Sudbury has relocated to the Centre de Santé communautaire du Grand Sudbury building on Frood Road.

Thanks to support from the local community, the organization — which addresses the needs of people who are involved in the criminal justice system or are at risk of being criminalized — was able to find new accommodations. 

Cory Roslyn, executive director, said the community's helping hand serves as a reminder of the impact they've made in Sudbury.

"Every single person that we have worked with so far has been fantastic, supportive and providing us all the direction that we need and helping us along the way," she said.

Roslyn said she was able to salvage some filing cabinets and paperwork from the site the day following the fire. And staff set a phone network almost immediately on Frood Road to inform clients of the new location.

"The biggest message that I would like to share is just a big, big thank you to the community, to the firefighters yesterday, to the police, everyone who sort of helped us get through this," she said. "And we'll continue to get through this."

Sudbury police say the fire that tore through the office Tuesday has been deemed suspicious, and is now being investigated by the Ontario Fire Marshal.

Night of fire

Roslyn said early Tuesday morning she received a phone call from an alarm company, notifying her of both a burglar and a fire alarm activated inside the century-old home. 

"I can check our security cameras from my cell phone, so I pulled that up right away and I could see on all the cameras ...it actually kind of looked like rain going through the video," Roslyn said. 

"I looked out my window and realized it wasn't raining...and then I realized it was fire."

Roslyn said she immediately drove to the office.

"As I approached the street... kind of coming up through downtown near Lorne and Elm, they had all the streets blocked off already and the fire was being fought in full swing," she said. 

Police let Roslyn walk across the street from the building, where she stood for half an hour, watching it burn.

"It was awful," she said. "I mean, the building, it's a historical building. It's been there for over a hundred years. There's just so much history and so much from history, but also like local library history within that building and just watching it, watching it up in flames, it was really awful." 

"The whole front porch is destroyed and our main reception area is completely burned," she said. "There were a lot of pieces to the building that were still the original — the staircase and woodworking and door framing and all that."

"And much of that is gone and burned."