The fire service has special traditions carried out to honour its own lost in the line of duty and last week South Dundas Fire and Emergency Services honoured Senior Captain John Cooke by carrying out those traditions during his July 10 celebration of life.
Cooke died July 2 following a brief battle with cancer. He was 63.
July 10 at 11 a.m., through a deluge of rain, pallbearers Wayne Bartholomew, Ray Hunter, Bryan Holmes and Phil Thompson followed a SDFES fire truck draped in black, carrying the urn from the funeral home to the Iroquois Civic Center where the Celebration of Thanksgiving for the life of John Robert Cooke took place.
Behind them, fellow station-member firefighters carried Cooke’s decorations, hat and helmet, followed by a colour party from Ottawa carrying flags and axes along with a parade of uniformed firefighters and a lone piper.
The funeral procession passed under a large Canada flag raised across the roadway between aerial trucks from Cornwall and North Glengarry Fire Services on its way to the Civic Centre where family and friends of the popular firefighter gathered. Over 160 from various fire services attended.
The crowd filled the auditorium overflowing into the lobby and hallways for the service conducted by Rev. Mark Lewis.
Heather Cooke-Erwin and Alyson Sample, Bob Seely and Phil Thompson spoke remembrances of John as a brother, a family man and then a firefighter.
Following the presentation of the flag by South Dundas Fire Services, Bryan Holmes led the Fireman’s Bell Ceremony.
The Bell, provided by the Ontario Association of Fire Chiefs, is used specifically for line of duty services.
Holmes spoke about a fire-fighter’s last call and then a bell tolled three sets of three times, in tribute to and in recognition of a life of service.
The tradition recalls a time when the fire bell rang to call firefighters to an alarm and then, again, to signal the alarm had ended.
Cooke was a 35 year veteran of the local fire service.
Legislatively, certain cancers in firefighters are presumed to be occupational diseases, making this death a line of duty death.
Firefighters die of cancer at a rate up to four times higher than the general population, which is recognized through Provincial legislation.
This was the first line of duty death service in South Dundas since 1981 when an Iroquois Fire Department emergency van collided with a train while responding to a call claiming the lives of five firefighters – John Mason, Randy Thompson, Joe Billings, Allen Holmes and Dennis Fisher.