May 28, 2021

FROM FIRES TO PHONES TOM BLACK CALLS IT A CAREER

GRAVENHURST — When Tom Black answers the call now it won’t be for a fire, accident or medical call.

It’ll be on one the more than 100 antique telephones he collects — including one he’s rebuilding from 1882.

The Hamilton firefighter retired Tuesday after a 23-year career.

But not without a little overtime his last day.

“Yeah, I was supposed to be done at 3 p.m. (final days are always half a shift), but we got called out for a brush fire at 2:30.

“So I didn’t get back to the hall till 6 p.m.”

Then it was out of one big red truck and in to his little red Mustang for the drive home to Gravenhurst one last time — a highway commute he says won’t miss.

As he turned on to Forest Glade Drive, waiting for him was his wife, Carol, whose sisters had covered his front lawn with13 huge letters that spelled out ‘Happy Retirement Tom.’

Carol had a new barbecue and a surf and turf dinner waiting for him.

“I was really surprised,” said Black, a former Town of Gravenhurst facilities employee and volunteer firefighter for eight years before answering the call in Hamilton Oct. 5, 1998.

**Cheers! Tom Black was “surprised” to return to a huge welcome retirement sign that covered the front lawn on of his Forest Glade Drive home in Gravenhurst.**

But because he was in “fire suppression,” he had to retire at age 60, which he turns a week tomorrow on June 6.

“I could have moved into communications or training,” he said, “but I’d had enough.”

Especially riding the road for all those years.

When he started out the schedule was every day, then they moved to several days on and several off, which allowed him to come home on weekend and days off.

But in recent years he worked 24-hour shifts — which worked out to eight times a month.

That meant getting up a 3 a.m. and driving to work for a 7 a.m. to 7 a.m. shift

So he’d go to work and come home a day later, do that a few days in a row, then have a long weekend, repeat and get up to a week off at a time depending on the schedule.

He said he had “a great time” and that he’s going to miss his workmates at the Waterdown station where he finished his career as a firefighter after also working as a fire captain at one time.

But he said the job has changed a lot over the decades with a lot more medical calls and commercial and industrial fires.

Especially the past year with COVID and all the health protocols involved inspections and going out on calls.

It wasn’t just cleaning the trucks after returning to the station, but also around the hall, too.

He says he’s lucky to have survived without any injuries or lasting effects.

Black was never late and never missed a shift or a day of work — rain or shine, snowstorm, road closure or detour he reported for duty.

He loved the work and the men and women he went out with every day.

“I’m going to miss them. Living with them, cooking and kidding.”

They gave him a red Muskoka chair with his name and the Hamilton Fire Department logo on it that sits nicely next to the fire pit in his backyard. It was quite the site to see in back of his Mustang as he drove it home last week.

**Tom Black and his wife Carol are sitting pretty in a Muskoka chair fellow Hamilton firefighters presented him on his retirement this week.**

And while he received his early fire training in Gravenhurst at the Ontario Fire College, Hamilton had its own training academy where he received further fire instruction.

So he’s sorry to see the college close in March, because he thought he might be able to teach there in retirement.

He says he has no intention of resuming his volunteer role with the Gravenhurst Fire Department. He’ll leave that to the younger people, he said.

Now, between his honey-do and bucket lists he hopes to turn his hobby in to a bit of a money-making venture.

Because he loves crank calls. And a lot of cottagers like to have old phones on the wall that still work.

As well, he’d love to find one of those old red British phone boxes, which are very expensive. The pandemic put off plans for trip to Europe, where he thought might track one down.

But he’s got dozens of old phones to repair in the meantime.

With not quite a full pension (shy by seven years), he says he and Carol — who works in the office at Canadian Tire — will be able to eventually go for a few local rides in the Mustang or his motorcycle.

And soon visit with their daughter Jennifer, who is a family law lawyer in Toronto with husband Michael Cook, and son David, an engineer with IESO, which operates Ontario’s wholesale electricity markets.

Now he just has to quit waking up at 3 a.m.

Even it is a great time to work on a 139-year old phone.