By Kari Janzen, Staff Reporter
Ryley Council decided to donate the Village’s decommissioned 1963 fire truck to the Ryley Museum, which has been used by the public works department for many years, during their last regular council meeting held Tuesday, Feb. 17.
“We’ve been looking at the pump and we’ve been pricing how to fix it,” Chief Administrative Officer Glen Hamilton-Brown said. “As it sits right now, you fill it up and it just leaks. It’s not useful for what we’ve been using it for. You’ve read the letter from the museum, and they’re keen to have it. It really is done for us, and I think it’d be a good gift to give it to the museum.”
Councillor Dale Roth said it is important for residents to know that it isn’t worth it to repair the truck due to its age.
“I think we need to make sure the public understands that the cost for repair isn’t worth it. And, it is something to put in the museum. It is part of Ryley,” Roth said.
The motion to donate the decommissioned 1963 fire truck to the Ryley Museum was carried.
“The museum has every truck that was retired from the Ryley Fire Department and this one completes that set,” Hamilton-Brown told the Tofield Mercury later.
“The fire truck has been a very useful Ryley Public Works workhorse for many years as a water tank transport for clearing sewers and storm drains, washing streets, and numerous other water spray uses. Ryley now has portable tanks and pumps that we load on trailers, so this is a very fitting final retirement for this Grand Old Firetruck,” Hamilton-Brown said.
“This one would have been the third fire truck Ryley got back in the day,” Willis Reist, president of the Ryley Historical Society said. “I don’t know the exact year but we’re thinking somewhere around 1976-77 was when the Village got the truck from Tofield or the county. Ryley used it until, I think about 1990, and then it became the Public Works truck, and it has been ever since,” Reist said.
Reist said the very first fire truck to arrive in Ryley was a 1941 Ford in 1946.
“It was war surplus. It used to be an airport crash truck. Then after the war they sold all of those.”
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