Ontarios fire towers

Found a fantastic website!

http://ontarioftl.bravehost.com/

I climbed both the Haliburton and Ganaraska towers.
Share your tower stories here if you have any :thumbup:

Both the Northumberland and Durham towers were removed in the late 1970's,although,the footings are still there. After the province deeded the Ganaraska Forest to the Ganaraska Region Conservation Authority that started to require forest user purchase of day-use passes or full memberships,some members explored the possibility of restoring the towers and opening it for public tours to off set costs,but,it was quickly panned by the legal beagles citing vandalism and civil liability in the event of misuse. Too bad.

Some interesting history in those maps. Climbed the Haliburton and Parry Sound towers a long time ago.
Would also be interesting to find a map of all the old airfields around the province. We used to pick berries on the one in D'hiver....it was an emergency field during the war for planes being shipped from out west. The planes were then crated up and shipped when they got to the east coast.

Two of my brothers worked in fire towers for a summer job. Between them they manned Blewett, near the top end of Onaping lk, Ellis tower which is immediately adjacent to the highest point in Ontario on the Ishpatina ridge and one on Elephant head lk, Gogama district.
I blame those summer jobs on their questionable social behaviour through their teen years.
In this district towers began to be phased out in 1970/71 and I flew the inaugural fire detection flights during those years to determine whether it was an effective system or not.
I've got tons of stories from my brothers about their life of isolation in those remote towers.

Share them stories :goodstuff:

I found that site years ago, pretty neat. The Burt Lake tower west of KL was still standing a couple of years ago.

In the early 1970's a good Friend of mine and I were visiting his Parent's home in Dorset. His Father was a retired C.O and their home was near the base of the fire tower. We climbed the tower and recall having a good grip on the railing as I am not fond of heights.

I climbed the Sherwood tower with my uncle many times In barrys bay I was around 10 years old at the time I even learned how to play cribbage while we waited for the the fires to happen. this tower was about 110 ft high don't think I could do it today way out of my league now !!!!!!!!!!

Towers were measured to the floor and the most common were 85 and 100 footers. There are probably a few exceptions that I don't know of but Silver Peak tower in the Killarney mtns measured all the way to 7 ft.