Abbotsford — Every day, fire alarms ring and firefighters do their courageous work, risking their own lives to save others. Their deeds are sometimes recognized in a newspaper or social media post, but memories of their heroic acts fade with time.
That’s why Adam Campbell and the Abbotsford Firefighters Association enlisted the help of UFV history students Sophie Jones and Hunter Gauthier. Campbell knows there’s a rich history within the Abbotsford Fire Department, but with each passing year more firefighters retire or move away, and more stories are forgotten.
For their practicum project titled Archiving the Alarm, Gauthier and Jones compiled an in-depth history of the Abbotsford Fire Department. The students spent countless hours over the 2025 summer and fall semesters digging through physical archives and online sources.
Their work started with an open-ended challenge from Campbell to find historical records connected to the Abbotsford Fire Department — names, dates, people, places — anything they could get their hands on. The thought was that their findings would be integrated into a training manual for firefighters, but they produced so much material that their work may now also be used as source material for a book.
“It started as a 20-page document and kept getting bigger and bigger,” Gauthier says. “We ended up with more than 400 pages.”
Gauthier and Jones combed through The Reach Gallery archives, which contained physical copies of Abbotsford newspapers dating back to 1904. One of the gems they uncovered was an anniversary edition of the now-defunct Abbotsford Times chronicling some of the biggest moments in Abby Fire Service history.
“There were snippets of old articles that we found in that one paper, which was fantastic,” Jones says.
The UFV Library played an important role, offering online access to Abbotsford-area newspapers from the 1920s to 1940s. Jones and Gauthier located materials at Abbotsford City Hall and various community libraries, and found a surprising amount of info digging through LinkedIn and Instagram posts.
“We had to be creative in our problem solving,” Gauthier says. “We stuck to traditional media in the beginning, but as those became less fruitful, we shifted to social media, websites, and other sources of information.
“I did my first Freedom of Information (FOI) act request,” Jones adds.
It’s impossible to read through more than 100 years of fire department history without encountering emotional stories of lives and property lost.
For Jones, absorbing accounts of the days following the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre and other targets in 2001 brought her to tears.
“All of the fire departments from the border towns, Abbotsford, and Langley came together to have a big commemoration for the firefighters who lost their lives in New York,” she says. “There were poems written by firefighters, and reflections on the hazards of the job. They showed a lot of empathy for their fellow firefighters during a time of loss and sadness.”
For Gauthier, whose parents are both first responders, it was the story of former Abby FD captain Dean Larivee, who lost a battle with cancer around 2006.
“He was one of the first firefighters to be covered under a new workers compensation policy for firefighters who got cancer because of their job,” she says. “There were several newspaper articles written about his dedication to the community, and his legacy was this really good thing he did for future firefighters before he passed.”
There were uplifting moments too, tales of courage, saved lives, and fun that was had.
Gauthier enjoyed reading about annual water fights between fire departments, and Jones laughed reading about the bucket brigades.
“That’s how it all started, with a couple guys with buckets, working out of someone’s garage,” she says.
Jones hopes to become a teacher. Gauthier is still figuring out her future path, but both students say the Archiving the Alarm project taught them valuable lessons.
“I learned a lot about patience and communication,” Gauthier says. “We did most of this work independently, and there was a lot involved in making sure everyone was on the same page.”
Jones agreed, and says Campbell was great to work with, making everything easier.
“He didn’t bulldoze us and he didn’t treat us like students,” she notes. “He respected our expertise in research, and let us do our thing, and we relied on his expertise to help us with things that only a firefighter would know.”
The project is done, for now, but Jones and Gauthier know there’s more to be unearthed.
“There are more things that we know existed, events that we know happened, but we couldn’t find anything tangible in our searches,” Gauthier says. “We found nothing on the Sumas Fire Department, other than one record of a fire chief, but we know there was a fire hall because it’s still standing there today.”
While the feeling that there’s more to do persists, Jones says there’s a lot of pride in what they’ve accomplished.
“The amount of work that we put into it, and how it’s evolved over time, has been incredible to see,” she says.
