The OVFD’s annual banquet recognizes those who risk their own well-being to protect the community.
It’s a hot ticket (no pun intended) and a rare privilege to be invited to the annual Oxford Volunteer Fire Department‘s annual banquet. The Saturday evening event began with a social hour, where old friends and colleagues, current and former firefighters, representatives of the Town of Oxford, and others came together to celebrate selfless service to our community.
Banquet tables were arranged and decorated with centrepieces on loan from Eric Mosher (GJDE Enterprises), all firefighter related, representations of fire trucks and equipment. Old-style firefighter helmets were hung from pillars throughout the room. Historical photographs that showed the department’s development over the past hundred years were also on display around the room.
The roast beef dinner was served promptly at 7:00pm, following a Blessing provided by Honorary member, Ken Hickman. The meal was followed by remarks from Fire Chief Bruce Rushton and Deputy Chief Kyle Purdy. MC for the evening was Captain Nick Purdy.
Also attending, in addition to spouses and partners of the invited guests, were representatives of the OVFDs Mutual Aid partners, representing the volunteer fire departments of Westchester, Collingwood, Pugwash, Shinimacas and Springhill.
Fire Chief Bruce Rushton — 2025 Banquet Report
Oxford Fire Department
Good evening everyone, and thank you all for being here tonight. It’s an honour to stand before the dedicated volunteers who make the Oxford Fire Department the strong, resilient, and community-minded organization it is. To our members, our mutual aid partners, our Mayor, Deputy Mayor, Councillors, and the town staff — your support, commitment, and collaboration are deeply appreciated. Nothing we accomplish happens alone, and tonight is a chance to celebrate the collective effort that keeps our community safe.
I also want to take a moment to acknowledge our honorary members and partners who are here enjoying the evening with us. Your continued support and connection to this department mean a great deal. And a special thank-you to our MLA, Tory Rushton, and his better half, Tracy, for joining us tonight. We appreciate your presence and your ongoing support of emergency services in our region. Thank you to our invited guests for joining us tonight! We appreciate your ongoing support throughout the year.
This past year, our department responded to 128 calls. Each one represented a moment when someone needed help, and each time, our volunteers stepped forward without hesitation. Our call breakdown shows just how diverse our work has become:
- 21% were medical-related,
- 15% were structure fires,
- 30% were motor vehicle collisions,
- 16% were woods fires.
Geographically,
- 21% of our calls were within town,
- 41% were outside of town but within our fire district, and
- 38% were mutual aid, reflecting the strong partnerships we maintain with neighbouring departments.
And notably, 24% of all calls occurred on Highway 104, reminding us of the high-risk environment we often operate in.
Out of the various agencies, RCMP, EHS, DOT, Towing companies, YOU are the only ones out there volunteering… and usually, the last to leave the scene. Thank you for your commitment and support!
* * *
One of the most significant incidents this year was the woods fire in Birchwood, where we saw an incredible level of cooperation and support.
We had nine fire departments on scene, with two additional departments providing coverage, along with the Department of Natural Resources and Renewables, EHS, RCMP, the Department of Transportation and Public Works, local contractors, and many local residents reaching out offering to help or dropping off food.
It was a powerful reminder of what can be accomplished when a community and its emergency partners come together with a common purpose. I want to thank everyone involved for their tremendous effort and teamwork.
We actually increased our membership as a result of that fire.
This year also brought important opportunities for growth. Both Kyle and I attended the annual Fire Chiefs Conference in Charlottetown, gaining valuable insight and training that we’ve brought back to strengthen our department.
We were also fortunate to receive $30,000 from the Province through the Emergency Services Provider Fund an investment that directly supports our equipment, readiness, and safety.
Some of the purchases are displayed.
Our membership saw meaningful changes as well. We honoured the S retirement of a long-serving member who dedicated 30 years combined service to this department —a remarkable milestone and a legacy of service we are proud to recognize. At the same time, we welcomed two new members, bringing our current roster to 27 volunteers. Each one of you plays a vital role in our success, and I’m grateful for the dedication you bring to this department.
Training remained a priority throughout the year. Deputy Chief Kyle Purdy is going to report on the busy year this department has had with that.
This year brought challenges as well. For the first time, our province implemented a fire ban, a reminder of how quickly conditions can change and how important preparedness truly is. With the support of the town, local contractors, and our own volunteers, we completed a major improvement: a fully functional dry hydrant on Black River, which will serve our community for years to come. When a water supply is needed for calls within the area, this will alleviate pressure on the town hydrant system. We are hopeful to be able to have a couple more dry hydrants installed this year to further improve our water supply needs.
Our volunteers continued to show their commitment beyond emergency response. During Fire Prevention Week, we welcomed pre-primary and elementary students to the station, giving them a chance to learn, explore, and connect with their local firefighters. Many proudly took part in our colouring contest. We also supported the Christmas Toy Drive at Mervil Rushton’s, and we handed out treats during Halloween. We again supported MADD Canada through the Red Ribbon Campaign, promoting safe and sober driving. Our volunteers also participated once again in the Progressive Agriculture Safety Day, helping educate youth on safe practices at home and on the farm.
I also want to highlight one tool that has become increasingly valuable to our operations: our drone. It has been called upon more and more for search, scene assessment, and safety. A special thank-you goes to Darren Dickie, whose skill and dedication as our drone operator have made this capability a true asset to the department.
Looking ahead, we know that changes are coming with the Modernization of the Fire Service of Nova Scotia. While change can bring uncertainty, it also brings opportunity. We will continue to adapt, stay informed, train, and ensure our department remains strong, prepared, and well-supported as these updates unfold.
Tonight is about celebrating all of you the volunteers who show up, who train hard, who answer the call, and who serve this community with pride.
Thank you for your dedication, your professionalism, and your unwavering commitment to the Oxford Fire Department. I am proud of what we’ve accomplished together this year, and I look forward to what we will achieve in the year ahead.
Enjoy the evening, and thank you for everything you do.
Deputy Chief Kyle Purdy
Good evening guests, spouses and fellow fire fighters.
At this time I would like to ask all fire fighters to please stand for a toast to our spouses. Without you holding the home fort it would make it very difficult for us to do what we do, we appreciate everything you do for our dept, weather it’s coming to functions, making treats for social nights, or showing up with to the station with meals after long days or night later fighting fire.
We would like to thank for our members for their dedication and determination over the last year. When that pager goes off, you guys show up no matter the time or type of call. You give up evenings and weekends away from family to train to become better fire fighters to help serve our community, in which we take great pride in.
In the fire service things are always changing, no two situations are the same, we see difficult challenges on every call but someway somehow our team always figures it out. That comes back to training, education and research, if I ask how many fire fighters’ social media reels were fire fighting related, you would be shocked. You guys are very good at thinking outside of the box and coming up with solutions not many others could think of. Bruce and I know we have some of the best trained fire fighters in the province, our work ethic on fire scenes are next to none, when it’s time to get the job done we put our nose to the ground and complete any task thrown at us. Our mutual aid parters often comment on this.
This past year we have had some great training, I’d like to tip my hat to our officers for helping plan our training nights and our optional weekend training.
It’s just not our officers who helps train, it’s our dept as a whole, on multiple occasions through the year we have had drivers give up their own time to train others on the trucks.
We would to also thank our mutual aid partners for inviting us to their training nights, as well as attending ours.
We have spent hundreds of hours on training over the past year, training in all aspects of fire fighting, from pump training, search and rescue, hose and nozzles, PPE, vehicle extraction, rural water supply just to name a few. Fire fighting these days isn’t just putting the wet stuff on the hot stuff, we need to be jacks of all trades but masters of none when it comes to emergency response.
Already this year we have pump ops, vehicle extraction, fire investigation, assistance to the Fire Marshall, and a new level one program that four of our members have signed up to be instructors. We are looking forward to the training opportunities we have this year, we have lots of great ideas, with the help of the insurance levy, the province, and our mutual Aid partners we are excited to expand our training.
Thank you.
Also invited to speak to those in attendance were Oxford Mayor Greg Henley, and Cumberland South MLA Tory Rushton:
Mayor Henley: Last year you invited council staff to this supper. From the most educational evening I’ve had as mayor, I didn’t realize the extent of the commitment of this fire department. So on behalf of the town of Oxford, I would like to say thank you very much. We really appreciate it.
MLA Rushton: Thank you very much for the invite once again. It’s always an honour to be here. I miss this place like crazy, and you guys know that. I can’t wait to come back whenever I’m done this job. But I wanna talk about a few things. Bruce and I talked, he wanted me to mention a couple things. But before I do do that, Bruce, you mentioned the wildfire last year. I don’t know whether you guys know it, but you were the third largest wildfire going on when we were facing the largest fire in the province last year. When I got the phone calls ministered that my own hometown was having a wildfire, they actually were getting a helicopter ready to bring me, I don’t know what the heck I was gonna do.
Little did they know I was already in the area. I did get to come out and see some of you on day two of that fire. But the point that you worked as a team, how many departments did you say you had on there, eight? Nine departments plus three different departments responding for DNR, and whoever else was there helping. But my point bringing that up, if you hadn’t worked as a team that afternoon to get control of that fire, just imagine where we would have been as a province. We knew that at the province, the provincial level, of how hard our volunteers worked.
We also had a similar situation that following weekend down in Bridgewater. Between Bridgewater and Liverpool, there was a series of arsons and the team responded the same thing. It was just, it was astronomical being at the helm of the fires last year. And every chance I get to speak at fire service, but especially at my own fire department being honorary, a huge special thank you for representing yourselves. But you helped make me look a little bit better at the department as well.
But in all seriousness, also Bruce, you mentioned the modernization process. So I was minister of natural resources last year, the premier asked me to do a new project this year. So in December, I moved over to the Department of Emergency Management and overseeing the modernization of the fire service bill that was tabled here a couple days ago in the legislature.
And there’s a lot of worry going out through the fire service, but (a) this was something the fire service has been asking for for years. There’s actually been eight studies that said we need a minimum set of standards for training, we need a minimum set of governance, how to operate. So it doesn’t matter where you are in the province, and we call somebody to help, such as in a wildfire situation, we know what training is coming. We know what level of training we can expect to come. We know what level of equipment is coming.
But here’s the good news for Cumberland County and Oxford and the town of Amherst. You guys are already there. And when I’m traveling around the province with Chief Greg Jones, who’s the president of the Fire Service Association, the two of us are echoing what Cumberland County has already done, what the town of Oxford has already done, what the town of Amherst has already done. I’m gonna tell you guys, Darren and I were there, Truman and I were there. I can’t speak for the new era of the chief deputies. But did we always get along with council? No, we didn’t. But did we always get the support? Absolutely, we did.
I’ll tell you a story that I told Bruce here a few minutes ago. There’s fire departments out there that are ranking a U-Haul truck as their truck to respond to calls. That’s happening in Nova Scotia. They’re also taking a fire hat after a fire call and hanging it around to collect money to get gas so they can respond to the next fire call. They have zero level support from their municipality. And we said enough is enough.
So the fire service spoke last year with the Fire Service Association Review, and we stood up. We presented the bill in the legislature this week. And as I said to Bruce, the chief, we’re actually using Cumberland County as an example because we do have the support of the municipality. We have the support of the family of the firefighters. But we are actually already there. We are already there. And as I said, and I don’t wanna say that to create controversy, but our municipalities have really stepped to the plate in Cumberland County. I knew that before I was going in and doing this review, but it’s really shining through throughout the whole province.
We’re very lucky here at the fire service. And I had the chance, I wanted to say thank you for that. But the other point for your firefighters, Bruce, and the other representatives here. There’s not gonna be a whole lot changing in Cumberland County because it’s already being done and we’re one of the examples in the province. So hats off to you for providing the service to the province of Nova Scotia, your residents. That’s gonna be the example throughout the whole province.
You mentioned the emergency service provider funding. And I got questions over the last few days with the, it was a rough budget that was presented this week. But I can tell you there’s no, there’s not going to be any cuts to the emergency service provider funding. There’s actually a huge investment that’s going into the Department of Emergency Management, especially for this fire service review. Because as I said, there’s fire departments that are handing the hat around. We need to bring those fire departments up. But we also have to get the municipalities on level to bring those fire departments up and support them as well.
I don’t know what else I can say except a huge thank you. I miss you guys like the world. I can’t wait to get back here at some point and get the fire hose back in my hand. Maybe that’s why they didn’t want me out of the truck when I was down in Birchwood that day, but it’s a great feeling to be back here. And I just, I can’t say enough “thank you”s to you guys for everything you do. But also the support that you receive from your families to allow you to do what you do.
There’s very few weekends that I can drive by, whether it’s me going to the rink to drop Cooper off for hockey, that there’s not a group of people here doing something or training or they’re parked here because they’re somewhere else. And that’s not happening everywhere in the province. So you guys should really be proud of everything you do here.
But as Cumberland County on the whole, we should be very proud of our fire service. And I can tell you that’s the message that we’re carrying all across the province. So thank you very much for everything you do.
Chief Rushton, accompanied by Deputy Chief Kyle Purdy, Oxford Mayor Greg Henley, and Cumberland South MLA Tory Rushton, presented this year’s awards to members of the Oxford Volunteer Fire Department:
Firefighter awards
Leonard Allen – 5 years of service
Dave Weagle – 20 years of service
Stephanie Rushton – 20 years of service
Trueman Rushton – 30 years of combined service (Oxford & Collingwood)
Brent Marshall – 40 years of service
Dave Ellis – Driver of the Year
Darren Rushton Jr. – Officer of the Year
Dave Ellis – Dean Emmerson Award
Mark Dobson – Firefighter of the Year
(award accepted by Darren Rushton Sr.)
