A Brief History
The Fire Department was originally known as "Honeymoon Bay Mill Volunteer Fire Department." It was established by Western Forest Industries in January, 1947. Back then, members of the dept. were made up of WFI employees only. The first Fire Chief was Irving Taylor. A devastating fire destroyed the mill in July of 1948 and the fire dept. was closed.
In January of 1949, the fire dept was restarted and was headed by Fire Chief James Turner and consisted of 14 active members of the community.
Some major changes took place when the mill closed in 1981. WFI owned all of the equipment as well as the buildings. The department became a part of the Honeymoon Bay Improvement District and all of the equipment was donated by WFI to the fire dept. Property was donated as well by TAL Developments and a new firehall was built.
The department is now run by the CVRD (Cowichan Valley Regional District), and is made up of 15 community members under the current Fire Chief John Rowley.
