A lance was held for a new book: Not on My watch: a Tribute to the 2025 Wadin Bay Volunteer Firefighters at the Alex Robertson Public Library on Thursday March 5.
The book, written by Fred Reekie and Suzanne Holowach and Fred A. Reekie pays tribute to the community of Wadin Bay and the firefighters who saved the community in 2025.
Reekie lived in Wadin Bay for a number of years and has since moved to Saskatoon. Holowach’s husband is a retired water bomber and was one of the volunteer firefighters in the community.
After the evacuation orders for the wildfire in 2025 were lifted, Reekie and Holowach talked about writing a book about the experience.
Reekie works with the University of Saskatchewan writing books.
“They were part of my background, so I said sure. Let’s take it on,” Reekie said.
They approached the book with four objectives. The first was “deep gratitude and the need to recognize the efforts of the Wadin Bay volunteer firefighters.
The second was, “we were hoping that in the future, because the volunteer firefighters really get help from SPSA and northern municipal services. They really didn’t. In fact, they got some pushback,” Reekie said in an interview with the Northern Advocate.
One of the major difficulties – the volunteers asked for exemptions, which would allow them to leave town to go south for supplies, such as gas and food, they were refused. If they went south; they were not allowed to return.
They were able to work with other people that might be passing through and coming to Waden Bay to stop and deliver what was needed. This happened because the volunteers were not deemed essential services, Reekie said.
Dennis Renaud is president of the Wadin Bay Association. “He’s the one who was asking for it; he’s the one that got told no … He was the one who was told, ‘You have to evacuate.” And he said, “not on our watch.”
The thus came the title of the book, Reekie said.
The first objective is to “call to government officials, civil servants, to recognise the wisdom of collaborating with the local people.”
Local people know their community and area, he said. “They know that they know the topography. They know what resources there are, I mean those people have tremendous knowledge.”
There are a variety of people with varied backgrounds, he said. “There are conservation officers, retired water bombers, three retired water bombers, who were fighting it [the wildfire].
Folks in Waden Bay have experience from the 2025 wildfires and the 2015 wildfires as well. “They know all about pumps and how to work them … where sprinklers needed to go. I mean, that community had a tremendous skill set.”
So with Objective 3, he said, they hoped “government officials would recognize the competencies and skill sets that the local people have and would collaborate with them in the future.”
Object 4 involves preserving the history, “so it doesn’t get lost.”
To write the book, Reekie said, they put out a call for volunteers and “asked to written submissions, met with people recording the interviews and used them to write the book.
Reekie credited Holowach with having “a tremendous attention to detail,” and they did everything in chronological order.
They took from what people wrote and rewrote it and worked back and forth with people to get “it right.”
The book came of the printing press in December and sold out in “about a week,” Reekie said. “We are now into our second printing.
The evening at the Alex Robertson Library was the Book Launch – and introduction of the book.
Reekie said he hopes the book will encourage other communities across the north to become firesmart.
