SHARE ON: Photo credit: Mathew Reisler
The Ontario Fire College in Gravenhurst will be decommissioned on March 31st and Gravenhurst’s Mayor Paul Kelly says he wants to be involved in the discussion on what happens to the land.
Kelly says it’s disappointing because it means 20 jobs will be lost. “It may be very difficult for some of them to uproot their families and move somewhere else in the province,” he says. Kelly adds that the centre can facilitate the training of up to 2,500 trainees a year. “That also translates into the economy for the community,” he says. “They would probably be using restaurants, going to stores, doing shopping that will no longer happen.”
The Ontario Fire College in Gravenhurst is set to be decommissioned.
The training centre has not been used since March 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic began. When the building is officially decommissioned, it will have served as a training centre for firefighters for over seven decades.
While the college will be closed, the provincial government says staff will continue to “play a leading role in developing training courses.”
Ontario’s government says they are working to strengthen fire safety training in the province by making on-site and online training courses available in the communities where firefighters serve. The plan is to open 20 regional training centres that the government says will help firefighters better meet the needs of their communities and save municipalities money.