Growing community with a crop

The Derwent Volunteer Fire Department might be small but not when it comes fundraising.

This year saw the fire department grow, harvest and sell 21 acres of canola to raise funds for STARS air ambulance and, in addition to community time and cash donations, presented the helicopter rescue service with a cheque for more than $17,000.

“We’re a little bit different,” said Capt. Ed Mailhot of Derwent’s fire department and its fundraising. “What we do in Derwent is nobody takes a wage. We all donate that back to the department. We are always looking for different ways that we can improve not just our department but our community.”

That search for innovative ways to ensure the volunteers are properly equipped to protect the community led the department to the idea of growing a canola crop.

“We had access to a 21-acre property that had been sitting dormant for a couple of years and so we just put the wheels in motion and decided we were going to give this to STARS,” said Mailhot.

It’s all part and parcel of a community-wide effort to improve the hamlet of 100 and the surrounding County of Two Hills.

“It all started years ago and basically what was going on was (population) numbers were dwindling, the community was getting smaller — such is life in small town Alberta,” said Mailhot.

With funding dwindling for the department in conjunction with the population decrease, Mailhot said the decision was made to reinvigorate the fire service and build community spirit through it.

“It really set the mindset, especially for the new members, myself included, when you come into a department and see how active and how pro-community everyone is, you feel compelled to follow suit,” he said.

That proactive spirit showed up in cash donations and at the harvest of the canola crop.

Like most areas of Western Canada, the canola crop suffered under this year’s drought with less than 240 bushels harvested.

Which makes the fact Derwent was able to raise more than $17,000 even more significant.

“We’re quite proud of that,” Mailhot said.

It’s this type of community building which attracted him to the hamlet and he believes it’s a recipe for other small towns to follow.

To that end, the Derwent group is putting out a challenge to other volunteer services.

“We’d like to see other rural fire departments to try to set some land aside and try to do the same thing and get a challenge going to see how much we can collect collectively to generate for STARS,” he said.

According to the Derwent fire department, because of both in-service and community fundraising, it’s been able to buy a new fire truck, vehicle extraction equipment, a tracked UTV and a drone.

alex.mccuaig@producer.com