Port Moody Fire Rescue took the last word in the title to heart when they helped a nonagenarian scooter user one evening last month.
For five months Vince Forrester, 90, visited his wife Glenys, 91, daily while she was in hospital having a spinal fracture corrected. For the first two months it was at Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster. The last three months at Eagle Ridge Hospital in Port Moody. Usually he’d drive the couple’s van from their place at Earl Haige Residence at Austin Avenue and Laurentian Street in Coquitlam.
Sometimes, though, he would stay at his son Ian’s residence in New Westminster. When he was there, Vince would hop on his scooter and take SkyTrain to the Inlet Centre station and then scoot on up to Eagle Ridge to visit his sweetheart.
They met at a dance hall in the Staffordshire area in 1951. “I was drunk and she helped me get back into the seat,” said Vince.
He was 22 and after doing two years of mandatory military service — including being posted for a time in Palestine — he had become a mechanical electrician. Glenys was a nurse’s aide which, at that time, was the equivalent of today’s licensed practical nurse. She had lived in Canada up until she was nine years old before her father took the family back to his native Britain.
After they married in 1953, she wanted to return to family so to they moved to Ontario where he worked as an electrician for Metro Toronto. After scratching Vince’s itch to reside in Australia for a few years, they moved to the Lower Mainland. They did so because they left for Down Under from here in January when it was raining. At least it wasn’t snowing causing Vince to declare, “OK if we move back this is as far east as we go!”
Among his employers Vince worked for the province at Essondale before the couple retired to Nanaimo. They moved to Coquitlam, though, seven years ago to be closer to their three sons and their families.
So after all this time and all they’ve been through together he was determined to visit her every day despite entering his 10th decade of life.
“I love the woman,” said Vince. “Sometimes you have to forget your age. Age is a number that I don’t like, but it’s there.”
After getting off the SkyTrain, Vince started down the hill toward Guildford Way when his scooter hit a bump and it conked out. Fortunately, he was able to coast down, cross the busy intersection — thanks to a timely green light — eventually ending up at the Port Moody Firehall No. 1.
The firefighters saw Vince out back trying to get it going. They offered to help, but couldn’t figure out what was wrong. So Vince asked the firefighters if they minded him leaving his scooter until his son Gil, who lives on April Road in Port Moody, could come and pick it up.
But when Gil arrived his vehicle couldn’t carry the scooter, so the firefighters volunteered to load his scooter in the department’s pickup and take it to Gil’s place. But there was a catch. They couldn’t split the crew up, said the captain, Will Patterson. They would have to take a fire truck with them.
“If we were to get a call we would all need to go together,” said firefighter Kevin Butt, who was there that evening. “The problem is if we send one person away with our crew then it limits us on what we can do properly.”
So off they headed down Ioco Road and up April, a tight, winding road, to Gil’s house.
“You see people looking out the window and they were wondering what the heck a fire truck was doing on their street. I was embarrassed as hell. I thought it was a misuse of public funds, but I wasn’t going to tell anybody,” said Vince. “That’s a big truck to turn around.”
Vince was blown away by what the firefighters did for him.
“I didn’t expect it. All I wanted to do was sit there until someone came and picked it up,” said a sheepish Vince. “I was uneasy with it because they were using public resources for me. I don’t want to get that guy in trouble.”
He didn’t.
“No trouble at all. That’s what we do,” said Butt. “We try to help out when you need assistance. That’s why we’re a unique service, we can help out on all type of calls.”
