The Rivière-du-Loup fire department decided to give the citizens a little joy by displaying an 86-year-old truck that the firefighters had carefully decorated for Christmas.
The 1937 Fargo is the pride of the employees, who have done some minor work to restore it to its former appearance. This real gift to the population turns drivers' heads. At their son's request, some people stop to admire the pumper truck.
Whenever the opportunity presents itself, the engineers take the vintage truck out of the garage and place it in front of the barracks in a clearly visible place. This week they even took the opportunity to go for a short walk to cheer up people in the neighborhood.
The old Fargo, which had not been used for several years, was purchased at the time by the city of Rivière-du-Loup for the modest sum of $1,325 and 30 years later to another municipality for a price of $1,325 resold in Bas-Saint-Laurent sum of $4,200.
In 1990, the Louperivoise administration decided to bring the truck back for an amount of $2,000 and then rent it from us for the Christmas event parade in the 2010s.
When this Christmas festival came to an end last year, the city through its Fire Protection Service (SSI) thought about making it an attraction for the Christmas season.
The director of the SSI Éric Bérubé also told local media that his brigade had plans for the Fargo 1937.
One of the oldest
According to our research, the Fargo is one of the oldest fire engines in Quebec, but not the oldest truck in the province, as the Montreal Fire Museum has a 1923 Bickle and a 1931 American Lafrance in its antiques collection.
Some communities symbolically keep old fire engines. Last year, businessmen in Sept-Îles donated time and money to save a 1952 truck.
In Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Yves Boucher owned the largest collection of fire engines in Quebec for 25 years. In 2017, Mr. Boucher told the Journal that he was putting his valuable collection, worth more than $1.5 million, up for sale. The man who grew up admiring his firefighter grandfather owned 19 trucks from 1941 to 1977.