Volunteer firefighters mourn one of their own

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 on Wednesday.

The chief of the Antigonish County fire department was taking a breather outside the Mabou parish hall.

“We haven’t dealt with it 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 they 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 travelled to the community across St. George’s Bay where Debaie was raised to be honour guard at his funeral.

Places like Mabou and Cape George are short on young men like Debaie, youth who become part of the community’s fabric by virtue of not just living there but by immersing themselves in the institutions and joys that bind it together.

He had moved to Cape George, which creates St. George’s Bay by sticking into the Northumber- land 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.

“This is quickly becoming a cottage community and we need good people like him.”

So two years ago he joined the department and the entertainment at 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’d sunk their teeth into it is that he also baked a fine loaf of bread.

So on Wednesday, Cape George went to Mabou to remember a young man they wanted to keep.

After the service in St. Mary’s Church, they packed into the community hall to lean over plastic folding tables and share stores of Allan Debaie as 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.