A burning passion to help others

Fearless Winnipeg firefighter an inspiration to others during more than three decades on the job

By: Kevin Rollason

 

Bob Henley was the kind of person who was the first to offer his help.

It’s a good thing for the citizens of Winnipeg that he became a firefighter.

Henley was 91 when he died on April 14.

"Firefighting was something that dad was always interested in," his son Bruce Henley, now mayor of West St. Paul and a former firefighter with the local fire department, recalled recently.

"One of his friends had been hired two months before and within days of applying he was told he’d be in the September 1955 recruit class. Remember, this was 1955 and to get employment with the City of Winnipeg with the fire department or the police was quite a coup. You were looked at as a connected person in the community."

Henley’s turf through most of his years of service was the old City of Winnipeg, years before amalgamation increased its size; it was the area from the Assiniboine River north to the CP Rail tracks and from the Red River west to Polo Park.

There’s an iconic photo taken during a deliberately set July 1980 fire at the downtown Holiday Inn on St. Mary Avenue (now the Delta Hotel) that shows Henley helping a hotel guest onto a ladder from a balcony.

A Portage la Prairie delegate to the just-ended federal Liberal party convention died in the fire, seven others, including five convention delegates, were injured and hundreds were evacuated.

Bruce Henley says the photo captures his father’s character and how he felt about firefighting: he wanted to do everything he could to help people in trouble.

Henley learned the value of a dollar at an early age. Growing up on Ross Avenue in Weston during the Depression, his parents had little money and he was forced to do what he could to pitch in.

"He would pick up coal alongside the tracks going through Weston and bring it home. That’s how they heated their home in winter," Bruce said.

Henley went on to join the Canadian Army at the age of 19 during the Second World War and went to Camp Borden north of Toronto to train, but the war ended before he was deployed and he was sent home.

He soon was working with Powell Equipment as a mechanic and then with CP Rail as an electrician before becoming a firefighter, a career that lasted 30 years, the bulk of his career downtown.

Bruce said his dad was injured many times, burned, caught in flash-over and backdraft situations, exposed to toxic fumes, suffered from ammonia burns and broke many bones over the three decades.

"He loved to be first on scene and first in with his crew."

Henley received the Fire Service Exemplary Service Medal for his work.

Peter Humble worked alongside Henley for about a decade of his 32-year career.

"Bob was a good firefighter," he said. "We would go to a fire in the 1960s downtown and he would climb the (hydro) pole and cut the wires. There was no safety stuff then. I don’t even know if he had done any electrical work or training, but that’s what he would do. Now, safety would say no."

Humble said Henley taught him a lot about firefighting, but he will remember him most for how he handled things when they arrived at a blaze.

"He was very outgoing and he would talk to everyone, but when he got to a fire it was different. He’d ask if any kids were inside. A dog? Where are the bedrooms? He was an excellent firefighter.

"He helped a lot of people."

Jim Burns met Henley when he was 17 and says he decided to become a firefighter because of him.

"He was a renegade type of guy and he ran the rescue a lot because that’s the kind of man he was — full force," said Burns, who also had 32 years on the job.

Henley was quick to help people after work too, Burns said, referring to his three decades-plus as a member of the Khartum Temple Shrine. He was also a volunteer driver for the Canadian Cancer Society, delivered Christmas hampers for the Christmas Cheer Board and coached hockey at Clifton Community Centre.

Even when he was taking a holiday with his family, Henley was on the lookout for people to help, his son said.

"Once we were on a family vacation to Niagara Falls and all six of us children were in the back of the station wagon," Bruce said.

"My parents saw three hitchhikers just outside Winnipeg, who wanted to go to Toronto, and (his parents) told us to make room. They took them all the way to Toronto."

Henley met his wife, Betty, at a dance at the old civic auditorium, where the provincial archive building is now, in 1946.

"They just connected," Bruce said. "They were very happily married. They were on the same page of life."

The pair got married in spring of 1950, and headed off on their honeymoon to Kentucky, not realizing while they were gone that the Red River was rising.

"They got as far as the other side of Grand Forks when they realized how big the flood was," Bruce said.

"They abandoned their vehicle there and took the train back. They had to go back to get their vehicle after the flood was over."

Their first home together was an apartment on River Avenue, but after a couple of moves they started building a new home on Valour Road. It was here they raised their four boys and two girls.

Henley and his wife enjoyed 37 years of marriage before she died in 1987.

Tragedy struck in 1975 when their eldest son, Paul, a passenger in a car, died in a crash on a road near West Hawk Lake when he was 22.

Bruce said that, thankfully, his dad didn’t die from cancer like so many retired firefighters from that era have.

"It was just old age finally got him," he said.

"His outlook to the end was "be positive and make a difference in the world." He did that."

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca