Fire at Vaughan's historic Michael Cranny house leaves two community groups scrambling

YorkRegion.com
Nov. 20, 2014
By Adam Martin-Robbins

SantaFest in Maple is marching on as planned Sunday afternoon, but organizers will no doubt be keeping their fingers crossed that the parade goes off without a hitch.

That’s because a fire late last month at the city-owned, historic home organizers operate out of left them scrambling to find a new home base.

“It’s the worst time of the year for us. In the lead up to the parade, it’s quite challenging and makes it really hard,” parade manager Garry Vosburg said Wednesday afternoon. “Hopefully, for the outside public, it doesn’t look like it’s a factor. We’re hoping they can’t tell the difference.”

Flames erupted in the kitchen area of Michael Cranny House - a one-and-a-half storey, fieldstone house built in 1851, in the Jane Street and Major Mackenzie Drive area - just before 6 a.m. on Oct 20, according to Fire Chief Larry Bentley.

Although fire damage was contained to a wall in the kitchen, there was extensive smoke damage throughout the house.

It has been determined that the fire was caused by “improper storage of cleaning supplies” and the repair bill could reach as high as $50,000, Bentley said.

It’s not known, at this point, how long it will take to complete the necessary repair work.

In the meantime, SantaFest and Human Endeavour, a non-profit organization that also operates out of the house, have had to remove all of their supplies and equipment from the home and setup temporary headquarters elsewhere.

Vosburg said not only were items used for the parade stored at the house, organizers also met there to figure out the logistics of staging the highly anticipated annual event as well as to sort waivers and prepare information packages for the judges and the media.

“This is when a lot of the fine tuning and last minute organization goes on and it’s difficult,” he said. “We’re working out of my garage and other people’s houses, wherever we can find space... It takes hours and hours and hours so that’s been difficult, but I’m hopeful that the people who are participating and certainly the people who are watching the parade aren’t going to see a difference.”

Noor Din, founder and CEO of Human Endeavour, said although the fire damaged a lot of his organization’s equipment and has left it without space to offer a couple of its programs for local seniors, something positive came out of the incident as well.

It showed just how well prepared the organization is for a more serious disaster, he said.

“We were able to start our operations the next morning from my home,” Din said. “We had our critical database saved separately so even if the complete (building) was burned down, we still would be able to operate and start our critical operations from someplace else..."

“I am extremely happy that we are ready for any sort of disaster,” he added. “Let’s hope we don’t face one, but we know our capabilities and how quickly we can rebound and how quickly, without interruption, we can keep our operations going.”

The organization plans on sharing what it learned with other small, non-profit organizations to help them improve their emergency response capabilities, he said.

Din says he was also very moved by the outpouring of support from other local organizations and residents.

“There was a lot of positive response from different organizations and especially local community members who are very passionate and very caring about Human Endeavour and its activities,” he said. “They were phoning me to check if we need anything and where they can help. Some of our partner organizations offered us space to accommodate us temporarily.”

For now, Human Endeavour is operating out of an office at 9401 Jane St., suite 206.