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Bill McHale’s parents ran the Douglas Tavern for nearly half a century.
On Monday evening, despite the best efforts of McHale — the fire chief of Douglas, Ont., about 100 kilometres due west of downtown Ottawa — the building it occupied was destroyed in an intense blaze.
Standing in front of the smouldering ruins on Tuesday, an exhausted McHale described the hours-long battle against a fire that refused to die.
“Three different times we thought we had the fire out,” he said. “It seemed every time we gained ground, the fire outsmarted us.”
Another local firefighter first spotted the blaze around 8 p.m. and alerted five occupants in the building, McHale said.
But despite its location just two doors down Queen Street from the Douglas Fire Department, and the quick response of crews from six fire departments across Renfrew County, there was nothing they could do to save the historic structure.
Complicating their efforts to extinguish the flames was a series of additions made to the building, which McHale believes dated back to 1884. He described the renovations as “several roofs upon a roof as add-ons over the years.”
“The fire was in between the roofs and we just couldn’t get the water to where it needed to be,” he explained.
Firefighters used an excavator to try to gain access to the fire and isolate it from the rest of the structure, but McHale said the tactic backfired.
“As soon as we gave it air, we had flame through the whole thing.”
A fire broke out Monday night at the building that once was home to the Douglas Tavern. As Jodie Applewaithe reports, residents are mourning the loss of a community landmark.
‘A community meeting place’
The fire wasn’t brought under control until after 3 a.m. Tuesday, said McHale, who hailed the fact that no one was injured.
“Everybody went home safe,” he said.
After a sleepless night, McHale had little time to reflect on the loss of what he described as the “community meeting place” in the tiny settlement on a bend of Highway 60.
He did recall the smiles of all the revellers who celebrated St Patrick’s Day at the tavern over the decades.
“The smiles were ear to ear,” he said.
His parents ran the Douglas Tavern from 1972 until 2021, when it closed due to the tough economic circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic, McHale said.
It was at this time that Amanda Todd and Dan Peters took over the business, opening a popular diner and furniture store on the premises.
On Tuesday, the couple stood in the frozen street mourning over the ruins of their business venture.
“Numb,” was how Todd described her state of mind. “We haven’t slept, was crying last night.”
“It takes your soul out,” Peters added. The building “was almost a living, breathing thing,” he said. “It’s been there so long.”
Todd interjected: “Part of our family’s basically died right now. Part of the community’s [family] died.”
The cause of the fire remains undetermined, according to McHale. He said investigators do not consider it suspicious.