Firefighters gather to say goodbye
Mabou native Allan DeBaie buried in hometown following accident
The North Shore Volunteer Fire Department will be quieter and, for the forseeable future, sadder.
“He was a sassy little Cape Bretoner,” said Hughie MacEachern as he described Allan DeBaie, whose funeral he was attending on Wednesday.
The chief of the Antigonish County fire department was taking a breather outside the Mabou parish hall.
“We haven’t dealt with (his death) yet,” said MacEachern of losing one of their own.
Near midnight on Nov. 7, his department responded to a call at the Ballantynes Cove wharf.
A small open boat had come in to the wharf, but the lone occupant never made it to his waiting vehicle.
Only when the firefighters arrived did they realize it was Allan DeBaie — a member of the department. They found the 33-year-old floating in the water.
“He might have slipped and fell,” said MacEachern. “It’s easy enough to happen.”
So on Wednesday the department members travelled to Mabou, where DeBaie was raised, to be the honour guard at his funeral.
Places like Mabou and Cape George, where DeBaie lived in Antigonish County, are short on young men.
He had moved to Cape George, which creates St. Georges Bay by sticking out into the Northumberland Strait, seven years ago.
Each spring, DeBaie would go home to Mabou to fish with his father. From his adopted home he ran his drywall and house painting business — Caper’s Tapers and Painters.
“I met him at the wharf one day and I told him to smarten up
and go put in an application to the fire hall,” said MacEachern. “(Cape George) is quickly becoming a cottage community and we need good people like him.”
So two years ago he joined the department and the entertainment of monthly meetings for the rest of the volunteers was listening to MacEachern and DeBaie taunt each other.
DeBaie brought with him to Cape George the gifts that come with growing up in Mabou — he could sing and play guitar and step dance.
He loved to laugh and to listen.
Anything that could be caught with a rod, be it mackerel or striped bass, DeBaie would be after. Word among those who sunk their teeth into it, is that he also baked a fine loaf of bread.
After the service at St. Mary’s Church in Mabou, they packed into the community hall to share stores of Allan DeBaie as the fiddles filled the air around them.
Standing outside, MacEachern shook his head. He’d gotten the last word with DeBaie. But he never wanted it.
DeBaie is survived by his partner Janine Keizer, his parents Albert and Elizabeth and brother Craig.