A Voice from the Eastern Door
A Voice from the Eastern Door
Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 58
On Saturday January 19th the North Franklin Shamrocks Bantam Team played host to the 2013 Winterblast Bantam Hockey Tournament. The tournament featured the North Franklin Shamrocks, Chazy Flyers, Norwood/Norfolk Icemen and the South Glenville Rangers. The tourney started at 8:00 with North Franklin Shamrocks playing the Chazy Flyers. That game ended in a tie with both teams sharing the points. Norwood/Norfolk played South Glenville with the Icemen downing the Rangers. North Franklin Shamrocks...
Last year after some negotiation the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne (MCA) contracted with the Akwesasne Economic Development Agency (AEDA) for Kanienkeha instruction and access to the Can 8 Language Lab. Part of this project included MCA allowing any interested MCA employee to attend lessons for 1 hour per day. The program began on November 29, 2010 and lasted for 12 weeks. From Monday to Thursday classes would meet for one hour. Classes were held at AEDA on Kawehno:ke and at Iohahi:io in Snye and...
The Akwesasne Economic Development Agency (AEDA) in conjunction with the Community Support Program of the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne presented a Construction Skills Program at AEDA’s office in the Peace Tree Trade Centre. The program lasted eight weeks with five weeks dedicated to training and three weeks dedicated to a construction project. The purpose of the program was to show different careers in construction and point the participants in the right direction towards employment. It i...
The long awaited arrival of the new airboat/fanboat for the Hogansburg Akwesasne Volunteer Fire Department occurred on Friday, Dec. 12. The airboat, designated 17 Marine Three, is based at Station 2 in Kawehnoke. The airboat was picked up by Stan Jacobs, Mike Adams and Issac McDonald in Florida last week for factory training. Ben Benedict flew down to take part in the training, as well. They then trucked it home just in time for Ice Rescue Training over the weekend. The airboat was built b...
From Friday to Sunday, December 12th to 14th, a Surface Ice Rescue course was held at Hogansburg Akwesasne Volunteer Fire Department (HAVFD) Station No. 3 in Snye. The course was attended by 25 responders from the HAVFD and the Akwesasne Mohawk Ambulance Unit. The course was taught by Butch Hendrick and Bryan Duffer of LifeGuard Systems (LGS) out of Hurley, NY. LGS has years of experience in water and ice rescue and has trained thousands of responders throughout the years. This is the sixth...
The Akwesasne Economic Development Agency (AEDA) in partnership with the Akwesasne Area Management Board (AAMB) completed a third Pre-Employment Program on Friday, December 12, 2008. The program provides training and job placements to job seekers who needed confidence to land the job they’ve been searching for. A successful curriculum was developed from the first two Pre-Employment classes. The Program includes a 12 week training session and a 6 week job placement for each participant. The s...
I’ve been in the fire department for fifteen years and more than likely I’ll be in for fifteen more. There is nothing that says Akwesasne more than our fire department with it’s three stations located in Hogansburg, New York, Kawehnoke, Ontario and Tsi Snaihne, Quebec. We don’t recognize any borders and we will respond anywhere in Akwesasne. It is an amazing organization that started from such humble beginnings it is hard to believe what a premiere organization we are today. With sixty-five members we are now a large department with sixteen pie...
Over the weekend I attended my first NASCAR race at Dover Downs in Delaware. It was an amazing experience with the weather being absolutely perfect and the race being fantastic. We tailgated before the race along with fifty thousand of our closest friends in the parking lot. The racetrack is a sight to behold with grandstands surrounding all but the backstretch where the Casino is located. Yes, Dover has the only NASCAR track with a casino on the grounds. We sat in between turns one and two and...
On Sunday, September 7, 2008 the Burke Volunteer Fire Department and Auxiliary put on a spaghetti dinner at the Burke Fire Station. The dinner was held to benefit and honor Donnie Smith, Sr. who has been in failing health. The dinner started at 11:00 am and continued until 6:00 that night. Dinner included spaghetti, salad, a dinner roll and a desert tray you wouldn’t believe. The cost was $6.75 for adults and $3.50 for kids. A Chinese auction was also held in the truck bay with many items up f...
Being in the fire department has some perks. We have the motto “If you call us, we will come”. We also have the motto “If you feed us, we will stay” As a volunteer outfit we don’t get paid which is sometimes a hard concept for people to grasp. Those who do grasp the concept know that they can help us out by feeding us. Especially at some of the long duration calls like searches and recoveries. If you have ever been to one of our chicken barbeques, and most of you have, you will notice that we sell out rather quickly and there are still chickens...
When I was growing up we heated with wood and would be found out in the woods during most weekends from fall to spring. One lesson that was always taught to us is to look up. There’s branches called “Widow Makers” that are hanging just enough to fall on your head when you start cutting down a tree. I went into the fire service with that engrained in my head and promptly forgot about it in favor of something called “Tunnel Vision”. This is where you concentrate only on the fire and forget to look around or more importantly, look up. My first...
I live a fair amount away from the station and very rarely get to drive any of the fire trucks. This is very frustrating for me since I attend so much training and I don’t get to use it as often as I want. For example, I attended a pump operators training and for weeks I learned about friction loss, hydrodynamics, pressure relief valves and all kinds of pump related issues. I didn’t get to drive a truck to a call for over a year so all I could do was run the pumps on Monday nights during weekly radio and siren check. Even then, I get moving wat...
Part of the fire departments duties is to assist with calls that involve potentially hazardous material. We train for it and the fire service has been mandated to handle hazardous materials (HazMat) incidents. We are acutely aware of how lucky we are that we have a local Environmental Response Team (ERT) to handle HazMat problems. Just like we’re lucky to have a full time Ambulance Unit and we don’t have to run medical calls. I was actually on a HazMat team before joining the fire department and I had an understanding of why the fire ser...
Every year the Adams family gets together for a day of golfing to see each other and visit. This year the tournament was expanded to benefit Morris Adams who is battling cancer. The rules of the tournament were simple, each team had to have a member of the Adams family in it. The tournament was organized by Veronica Adams and her daughters Wendy, Sheila and Sabrina Adams. Helping them were Margaret Thomas, Gloria Herne, Shelly Rourke, Michelle Laffin and many others. It seemed completely chaotic...
Being in the fire department means you have an additional three homes to go to if the need arrives. To understand this I’ll put in perspectives everyone can understand. No matter where I am, I’m always a couple miles away from a bathroom. I also have to share that bathroom with fifty other firefighters. I eat lunch at the fire station with the theory that one of these days the tones will go off during lunch and I’ll finally be able to drive one of the trucks. It happened a couple of times, enough to keep me going there for lunch. Besides that,...
(Editor’s Note: This is a special edition of Life on the Farm. Tales from the Station will continue next week.) This Life on the Farm is going out by request to Shawna. It’s been awhile but some stories just have to be told. I’m going to depart from my usual rule of not mentioning names since all of the people I’m going to mention have gone off to the great green acres in the sky (except Shawna of course). About thirty years ago farming was a way of life around here just as much as working iron. If you travelled down Cook Road, or any of the...
I got to go to an underwater rescue and recovery course held in Saranac Lake for SCUBA divers. This was a three day course that included multiple dives including a night dive. The instructor was a well seasoned dive master and he had been involved in a lot of rescues and recoveries throughout his career including a number of homicide investigations in the New York City area. He brought with him an assistant, an English émigré, who looked like a California surfer dude and sounded like Pierce Brosnan. He would be the diver, ready to go, if one o...
On Saturday, July 26 the Adams Family held a reunion at Adam’s Marina in Snye. Approximately 200 people attended throughout the day and night representing the families of the late Mike and Mary (Jacobs) Adams, Margaret (Jacobs) Terrance, John Jacobs, Margaret (Adams) Smoke and Peter Adams. The reunion was planned only one week before by Edith McDonald, Veronica, Wendy, Sheila and Sabrina Adams, Michelle (Adams) Laffin, Sherry Roundpoint, Pam Cook, Priscilla Lazore and many others. The reunion s...
Some of the calls we get from time to time are to help our fellow responders at emergency calls. Of these a lot come from the ambulance service to help transfer patients. I have gone on a number of these calls and it’s usually a minor affair in which they need just a little more muscle to get the job done. It is always best to ask for help than to go it alone and get hurt. This community does produce some large customers for the ambulance crews. This phenomenon is known as “Mohawk Medium”. They have had to make accommodations for just such...
We have some strange calls from time to time that the dispatch center accuses us of making up stuff just to roll the trucks. It’s even more interesting since some of our calls are on the river. This makes us unique since we are the only department in the country that has an international seaway running through it. We cover the St. Lawrence River from the Snell Locks to east of Lake St. Francis. That’s a huge area if you take a look at it on a map or if you’ve ever been out there on a boat. One night after grassfire season we had a huge drop...
I was sent to the fire academy for a Mask Confidence (Smoke Divers) Instructor’s course. This course is designed to build confidence in firefighters and had been successful in transforming firefighters into confident superhero types. It is such a good course that it is now part of the Firefighter One rookie course. I had a couple of months to prepare so I borrowed a dust covered treadmill and began working out on it everyday. I heard horror stories of firefighters going to this course completely out of shape and being sent home or ending up hos...
The St. Regis Mohawk Tribe, Mohawk Bingo Palace and the Akwesasne Mohawk Casino held an incredible fireworks show on Friday, July 4, 2008. The even was coordinated by Janique Odjick from the Mohawk Bingo Palace who was assisted by representatives from the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe, Akwesasne Mohawk Casino, Tribal Police, HAVFD, Akwesasne Mohawk Ambulance Unit and State and Federal Law Enforcement. Athletes from the indigenous games assisted Tribal Police with traffic control and were selling hot do...
On Saturday, July 5 the Massena Olde Car Club held its 11th annual Block Dance and Barbeque on Main Street in Massena from 5:00 to 9:00. The downtown portion of Main Street from East Orvis south to Laurel Ave. was closed to traffic. Classic cars, hot rods, sports cars and all kinds of interesting vehicles lined both sides of the street. Crowds filed past looking at all of the vehicles on display with awe and just a little bit of envy. The Block Dance was emceed by Wayne Sanfir of Hurricane...
During the summer the fire department used to have field days that all the old timers still talk about. These events were astronomical in the amount of work involved from planning, doing and cleanup. The last time we had a field day I don’t even think I was a teenager at the time. I still remember it, though. The field day was always held around this time of year by agreement with all the other fire departments. The event started in winter with the printing of field day books that were sold with a chance at prizes drawn during the field day. T...
On Wednesday, June 18, 2008 the Hogansburg Akwesasne Volunteer Fire Department took delivery of a new Fire Engine designated Engine 91. The new Fire Engine was purchased from VRS sales in Round Lake, NY. The Engine was built by Toyne, Inc. located in Breda, Iowa. The new engine went into service on Saturday, June 28, 2008. The new engine replaces old engine 91 that has been in service since 1978, a whopping thirty years! That truck has seen some action, you can only imagine the stories it could...
