Oakville Fire Marks 25 Years Since 9/11 With Memorial Stair Climb

Members of the Oakville Fire Department spent Friday morning climbing a training tower on South Service Road West, again and again, to mark 25 years since 9/11.

The memorial took place at the Oakville Training Campus for Emergency Excellence and was built around the 343 New York firefighters who died that day. Participants climbed the Fire Fit tower 20 times while Oakville Fire members told them about the firefighters who were inside the World Trade Centre. Some climbed in full uniform. Others wore a weighted vest.

MP Oakville West Sima Acan, MPP Oakville North-Burlington Effie Triantafilopoulos and town councillors took part alongside the crews.

"We're all here to do the same thing. To remember the fallen on a day that forever changed the landscape on how we live our days today," Fire Chief Paul Boissoneault said at the event. "Regardless of any political challenges that exist amongst countries, the first responder community knows no boundaries."

The climb was followed by a moment of silence, with department staff reading each of the 343 names aloud. A tire-flipping challenge ran later in another part of the campus.

How the memorial came together

Paul Hollingshead, the department's chief training officer, organized most of it. He visited New York before 9/11 and met members of the FDNY while he was there. "To me, being a small town firefighter, I go down there and see these giants of a fire service," he told Oakville News. "They accepted me like I was one of them." Some of them welcomed him into their fire houses, and a few invited him to their homes.

When the attacks happened, he thought about those same people. "It was really devastating because I knew 343 of those guys died and it's just such a horrible thing to happen to such generous people," he said. What he wanted from Friday morning was plain enough: "I just hope that today, with this gathering, that people can reflect back 25 years ago on the 3,000 innocent lives that were lost and the 343 firefighters that sacrificed their life to try and help others."