Downtown Weyburn, as well as a good portion of Government Road and Railway Avenue, has recently been adorned with all the festive decorations of the season by the City Firefighters.

“The City of Weyburn Fire Services have traditionally always taken care of the Christmas lights that go on the streets in the downtown area,” said Fire Chief Simon Almond.

He noted Fire Services puts up the lights every year, but not without doing due diligence to ensure their safety after taking them out of storage.

“All the lights are checked and cleaned, and any refurbishment that needs to happen happens,” said Almond.

He added another way they exercise diligence is in making sure that eventually, each light gets a chance to shine on each street.

“We try to alternate the location of the lights,” he explained. “So, for instance, if there were bells on Third Street this last year, perhaps this year it’ll be candles.”

The four career firefighters take on the project themselves, and, to make the process easier for them, sometimes they get some volunteer assistance.

“If we have one of our paid on-call staff available, and they’re off-duty and they want to do it, then we certainly encourage their help,” said Almond. “It just makes it so much easier when you have two people, as opposed relocating the truck and getting out of the bucket.”

He said this year, new brackets had to be fitted for the poles of the new lights installed in the downtown core.

“New brackets had to be fabricated, and we used the City welder services for that operation,” he explained.

He added we won’t get the Christmas tree that was located at the intersection of Third Street and Souris Avenue.

“There is no plan at this time to put that tree back up,” he said. “It’s quite a job to get the cables across and things like that. It was never talked about when the new lights went up, so I would imagine, for this year, the Christmas tree will not be going back up in that location."

Click on the video to see the process of Marc Schweitzer installing the lights on the new poles:

A light that had not yet been hung on the pole provides a good view of just how many bulbs the firefighters check before installation (photo by Marna McManus).

The view at Government Road at Coteau Avenue with the newly installed Christmas decorations (photo by Marna McManus).