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On a Saturday night in April 1963, Geneviève De Groot was called to Notre-Dame Hospital to examine a nurse who had injured her back. The first-year resident in orthopedic surgery had worked with the city’s ambulance drivers in the past so she knew they wouldn’t mind if she parked her red Volkswagen in the ambulance bay.
A short time later, ambulance workers, who had recognized De Groot’s car, came into the emergency room and told the 23-year-old resident that she was needed on an urgent call.
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A few hours earlier, a major fire had broken out at the Woodhouse furniture store at the intersection of Ste-Catherine and St-Urbain Sts. in downtown Montreal. As 200 firefighters got the stubborn blaze under control, the building’s roof and its fourth and third floors suddenly collapsed, trapping several firefighters on the second floor.
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When she arrived at the scene, De Groot donned a firefighter’s coat and hat and discarded her high heels for a pair of boots. “They put me in a cherry picker and dumped me there (on the second floor),” she recalled. As she crawled on her stomach, avoiding fallen beams and debris, De Groot managed to provide medical assistance to injured firefighters who were in agony.
“The sound of humans moaning is horrible,” De Groot said on Monday after being honoured by the Montreal Fire Department for her bravery 54 years ago.
De Groot, who is now 78, said many details of that night are now fuzzy, but she does remember comforting the trapped firefighters and telling them to “hang in there.”
“It was very eerie, like a movie,” she recalled. “I was terrified. It was my first time at a fire.”
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The Woodhouse fire claimed the lives of three firefighters, Marcel Rémillard, Robert William Leggett and Patrick McManus, and injured 27 others who were inside the building when the roof collapsed.
On Monday, the fire department paid tribute to the three men along with the other 140 Montreal firefighters who have died on the job since the department was founded 153 years ago.
Over the next few months, the department will install commemorative plaques in the entrances of 43 fire stations to remember the firefighters who have died on duty.
De Groot flew from her home in Michigan to Montreal for Monday’s ceremony and managed to reconnect with some of the firefighters who were on the scene of the Woodhouse fire on April 6, 1963.
“I was so happy to see them,” she said. “They are the heroes, not me.”
During the ceremony, she sat beside retired firefighter Léo Boulanger, who spent hours in the rubble trying to rescue his trapped colleagues. Boulanger and De Groot managed to rescue firefighter Adrien Gingras, who had been trapped for five hours. But as Bélanger crawled around on his hands and knees, he knew three other firefighters would not be as lucky. McManus and Remillard died after being struck by fallen beams and other debris. Leggett was rescued but died two days later in hospital of his injuries. Before he passed away, he told a journalist that he was happy to be alive so he could see his wife and children again, Boulanger recalled.
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During Boulanger’s 32-year career, he said 37 firefighters died on the job.
Better equipment and enhanced firefighting techniques have led to a decrease in the number of deaths, said Richard Liebmann, the fire department’s acting deputy director.
The last firefighter to lose his life on duty was Thierry Godfrind, who was run over by the fire truck while on a call in St-Laurent in 2012. Godfrind, 39, came late to firefighting and was only on the job for two years when he died. A man had called the fire department for help after he left a pot on the stove and then accidentally locked himself outside.
Frank Rafters, a firefighter who works in Pointe Claire, came to the ceremony on his day off to honour the dead firefighters. During his 27-year career, Rafters said he has heard many stories of firefighters dying on the job and has attended many funerals. “We are like a hockey team,” he said. “We eat together, sleep together and work together. There’s great camaraderie.”
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