The Loss Of The Vermilion High School

For decades, fire was a major danger for many communities, including Vermilion. One spark could ignite a building and leave ashes in its wake.

Vermilion has suffered many fires through its history.

One of the worst for the community, not in terms of the size of the fire, but because of what it burned down, was the fire that came as a new year dawned.

As 1940 began, the world was ramping up towards the most destructive war in human history. In Vermilion, while all that was happening on the world stage, fire hit the community.

On Jan. 15, 1940, fire destroyed the Vermilion high school.

At some point in the early hours of that day, the fire began but there was no indication for how it began. The large brick building was only 10 years old when the fire tore through the building and burned it to the ground in hours.

The school was completely modern, and heated through a central steam plant operated by the town. The building had six classrooms, a large assembly hall, a chemistry laboratory, a library and several administration offices. Just a few months earlier, a $1,600 air conditioning plant was added to the building. Many considered it to be fireproof because of the materials used in its construction. This was obviously not the case.

D. J. Bradford was making a night trip to the Vermilion hospital when he saw the blaze at 3:30 a.m. By this point, the fire was already on the upper levels of the building.

It was a very cold night, with the temperature at about -30 Celsius, which made fighting the fire even more difficult. There was also a strong wind that helped fuel the fire. Water was made available from the Canadian National Railway’s water supply. In the end, the building could not be saved and 140 students in the area were without a place to go for their education for a few weeks until an alternative could be organized.

Not only were many books and other items lost in the fire, so too were First Nations artifact that were donated to the school only a year earlier by Matthew Brimacombe, the first mayor of Vermilion.

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