Item 2015.001.01 - Fire Hose Reel

This fire hose reel was collected in 2015 during renovations of the G Building at the Humber College Lakeshore Campus, the former Administration Building of the Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital.

The hose reel is spring-loaded and was patented by Beauchamp Henry Montgomery, a resident of the Roncesvalles neighbourhood of Toronto (125 Garden Avenue). Along with colleagues, he generated several fire reel patents in Canada, the US, and the UK between 1909 and 1929. Montgomery claimed that this particular design was more aesthetically pleasing, compact, and cheaper to construct than other models. Other innovations he associated with his reel were the fact that it allowed the hose to spray even when it was rolled up, and that its pivoted joints allowed it to swivel out of its box with greater freedom of motion than other designs.

One of the stated advantages of the hospital’s cottage-style system was that the separate buildings would reduce the risk of a major fire, a concern that was realized at the Longue Point Lunatic Asylum in Quebec in 1890 when a large fire tragically killed many patients and staff. Despite the safer cottage-style building layout at the Mimico Asylum (Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital), the threat of fire remained a constant source of anxiety since many patients and staff lived on the grounds. In 1914, standpipes were added to cottages and the Administration and Assembly Hall buildings, connecting to an existing fire hydrant system. Between 1919 and 1920, patients at the Hospital built a Fire Hose Tower and Fire Hall with the assistance of Capitan Crawford, Inspector of the Fire Department. Today the old Fire Hall is home to Campus Security and a Tim Hortons.

The spectre of fire lingered over the hospital to its final days. While it was considered a pretense by some, the Ontario Minister of Health Dennis Timbrell’s claim that the Hospital was a firetrap was one of the reasons given for its closure in 1979.