Their Last Alarm: Honouring Ontario's Firefighters

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

Their Last Alarm is a chronological record of the 297 Ontario
firefighters who died as a result of their work. It is also a memorial,
a salute, and a pledge that their sacrifice will not be forgotten.

Turning the pages is like walking through a cemetery. As with the
countless rows of headstones, there’s a relentless march of the basic
stats on the men who gave their lives in the fight to control
fire—from William Thornton, who was killed while battling a Toronto
fire in 1848, to Bill Wilkins, who died in 2002 after being trapped in a
Barrie house fire. These mini-biographies are wrapped in a brief history
of the evolution of firefighting, from the bucket brigade of the early
1800s to today’s high-tech trucks and apparatus.

Over 50 archival photos supplement the work, helping the reader to
visualize the various types of equipment, the incredible danger faced by
firefighters, and the awesome horror a fire can produce.