Thank You
On the morning of November 11, we lost our beautiful home to fire. While we have lost the majority of our possessions, we continue to hold on to each other and all of the memories we’ve created during over 50 years on Amelia Street. We would like to thank Scott Meesters for his heroic actions of entering the home and getting Margaret to safety. Thank you to the Springwater Fire Department for battling strong winds and frigid temperatures as they valiantly tried to mitigate the damage to our home. We are eternally grateful for the support from our family and our incredible community. Our Amelia St. neighbours immediately gave us love, shelter, warmth and food as our home burned. We would like to thank the Red Cross for their financial and emotional support. Our community of Elmvale has been so generous and thoughtful . We thank you for your meals, gifts, clothing and well wishes.
In this season of giving, we encourage you to make donations to the Flos Elmvale Firefighters Association, Sharewear and the Red Cross.
John and Margaret Potts
“We Are So Grateful”: Local Family Praises Springwater Fire Department’s Heroic Response
To the Springwater Fire Department,
We are so appreciative of all of your efforts the day of our house fire on November 11. You were already helping other members of our township and raced to our home to ensure our safety. Working in frigid temperatures, battling the wind and the unique rooflines of our beautiful English cottage, we saw your professionalism, skills and expertise.
Thank you to Deputy Fire Chief Jeff French for continuously explaining each step of the fire to our son, Cal. That information kept the family apprised of the situation and made us feel confident in the process. You maintained such an orderly and calm scene during a difficult fire and a tense situation for us. You never hesitated to speak to any of the family and gave good hugs along the way. Thank you for contacting the Red Cross on our behalf. We were amazed to see them in the early evening with kind words and a generous donation to help us over the initial few days.
Thank you to Fire Prevention Officer Karen Jamieson who also helped greatly with communication that day with the family. We appreciated how both Jeff and Karen came to us once the scene was secured to carefully explain to us everything that had happened over the course of the day. You were exhausted and frozen, yet still took the time to make sure we understood what happened and what to expect going forward.
Thank you to Karen and Deputy Chief of Prevention Jeff Corriveau for entering the home later into the evening to search for John’s hearing aids and locating them quickly! Understanding the importance of hearing was essential for John to navigate the following days and your compassion is appreciated.
There are so many of you that did so much for us and we are sorry that we can’t mention each of you by name. We thank you for every job you did; fighting the fire, providing and maintaining equipment, driving to other stations for provisions, maintaining security at the scene, keeping the roads closed and for many other things we may not have seen. We recognize so many of you, but are overjoyed to see many new faces here tonight. When we selected Elmvale, Ontario from a teaching abroad magazine in 1968, we didn’t know what a wonderful community we’d be joining. Our new faces were quickly welcomed and supported upon our arrival. This encouraged us to volunteer in various capacities in Elmvale to give support to others and to help our community grow. We are so grateful that you volunteer your precious time to not only respond in emergencies, but to maintain your training, educate children, support community groups and lift others when they are down. Thank you for sacrificing time from your families and for putting yourselves at risk to ensure the safety of others.
We would also like to say thank you to the outlying fire departments that covered our township for other emergencies while Springwater Fire worked on our home.
We are grateful to Mayor Jenny Coughlin and Councillor Matt Garwood for all of their work behind the scenes to help us to navigate recognizing the key people who supported us that day. We also thank you for advocating for our fire department, to ensure that they have up to date equipment and training. You do a lot to make our township a positive and welcoming place for all those who live here.
Yours truly, John and Margaret Potts