A memorial to honour St. Catharines firefighters who died in the line of duty or from job-related illness is starting to take shape downtown.
In the past month, contractors at the parkette at the corner of Race, Carlisle and McGuire streets have completed the foundation, put in concrete bases for monuments and, most recently, added flagpoles.
“The progress lately has been fantastic,” said Barry Katzman, chair of the city’s Fallen Firefighters Memorial Task Force, which was formed in 2019.
“We’re seeing real steady progress here on the construction piece.”
Katzman said the task force has shifted its efforts from fundraising to execution.
The memorial is being paid for entirely by donations from individuals, organizations and businesses and will honour local firefighters who died in the line of duty, going back to the earliest known death in 1938.
It will feature a bronze statue of a male and female firefighter and a wall of 22 names of firefighters who have died.
“At the end of the day, I think it’s going to be something that the entire community is going to take just a whole bunch of pride in,” Katzman said.
“It’s long overdue, too. I mean, we’re honouring people that should have probably been memorialized a long time ago.”
The task force began fundraising in December 2021 with a goal of $500,000. Katzman said it is close, at about $440,000.
All of the $50,000 memorial wall sponsorships have commitments, along with six benches and a dozen trees for $10,000 each.
There are still about half of 225 bricks available for $400 each. The eight-by-eight-inch bricks will be engraved with the name of a supporter and used as part of a pathway leading to memorial statues.
“The key thing for us was to get the large donations in and the construction underway. I guess I’m optimistic that when people see all of that, there may be some interest in purchasing bricks,” Katzman said, adding that it’s a chance to have donor recognition on a city park that will be here for generations.
There was a groundbreaking ceremony in October 2022 at the empty city parkette near FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre. Last July, contractors began work on the site.
Among the work that still has to be done is the addition of irrigation. That has to be finished before landscaping can begin.
Marble walls that memorialize the fallen firefighters feature the Firefighters Prayer and a list of major donors and have been cut, but still have to be engraved. The bronze statue of the figures also has to be completed.
Katzman said the task force hopes to have the memorial done before the end of the year.
“We’re very optimistic that will happen,” Katzman said, saying there’s good momentum now.
“I think everybody is fairly motivated to ensure that the project’s completed before winter.”
The memorial was sparked in 2013 when Katzman’s late father-in-law, Larry Hall, a St. Catharines firefighter, was honoured in an international memorial ceremony in Colorado Springs.
Katzman realized that many cities in Ontario have their own memorials, including Welland and Niagara Falls, but St. Catharines did not.
Talks with active and retired firefighters and the city about the idea led to the memorial task force in 2019.
“This project’s extremely unique in that there’s not one single entity,” Katzman said. “It’s not a city project, it’s not a firefighter project, it’s not a private sector project. It’s all three.”
Information on the memorial, donations and how to get a fundraising brick can be found at StCatharines.ca/FirefightersMemorial.