This Nova Scotia: Charlie’s truck – [Updated]

[caption id="attachment_1253" align="alignright" width="270" caption="Top row: Ruby MacPherson and current Chief Sandy Hawley. Bottom row: retired Chief Charlie MacPherson and Jody MacDonald. "][/caption] More than 100 residents of tiny Ross Ferry brought the community's spanking new fire trunk to the Cape Breton Regional Hospital this week for an unusual ceremony honoring an ailing former resident who single-handedly built the department's first fire-fighting vehicle. Charlie MacPherson, now of Sydney, a retired Cape Breton Transit Authority mechanic, is seriously ill with kidney disease. After fire destroyed a popular neighbor's home in the spring of 1981, Charlie volunteered to spend his two-week vacation assembling a home-made fire truck from components he and others begged, borrowed, and scrounged. The engine and cab came from an old Pepsi delivery van. The tank had been abandoned at a North Sydney machine shop. Neighbors hauled the chassis out of a makeshift junk yard in the woods near Steele's Cross. In less than two weeks, Charlie assembled these unpromising cast-offs into functioning, 800-gallon pumper truck that served for eight years as the fledgling department's main firefighting gear. Charlie went on to serve as chief until he and wife Ruby moved to Sydney in the 1990s. Over the years, the department gradually upgraded through a series of better and better used fire trucks. Then last winter, its sharp-eyed truck captains proposed that the department take advantage of the depressed automotive industry to snap up a brand new truck at the rock-bottom prices then prevailing. Thanks to the department's consistent fund-raising and prudent financial management, the gorgeous GMC C7500 tanker-pumper is fully paid for. When word came that Charlie was seriously ill in hospital, the department voted unanimously to dedicate the new truck in his honor. Last Sunday, accompanied by Ruby and sons Shane and Stephen, Charlie wheeled out of the hospital and onto the back parking lot, where he found more than 100 grateful former neighbors waiting by the new truck. Chief Sandy Hawley presented him with a framed photo of the sparkling new vehicle, and a plaque declaring Charlie a lifetime member. A reader responds after the break.