The de Rouville Family

Here, read the transcript of the interview with Charles and Yvon de Rouville and Mathieu Hertel de Rouville, head and firefighters in the Saint-Eustache Fire Safety Department.

***

Charles de Rouville: Being a firefighter, where did that come from… for me? I can tell you, literally, that it was in New York. I was ten years old. And there was a call in the hotel where we were staying. And for a little guy from the country – because back then, Saint-Eustache wasn’t that big – to see the street fill with fire trucks… it was really, really, really impressive, and they all looked like giants. So, from that moment on, I said, “I want to be a firefighter one day.” And for many years, Yvon and I went to a lot of fires. We weren’t firefighters yet. We had a scanner, and we’d wait for a call to a fire. We had a really effective method. In fact, it was so effective that eventually we had to slow down because we’d often get there between the police and the firefighters. And we started to get noticed, if I can put it that way. And as time went on, I think, it allowed us to develop… a sense of it. Yvon’s grandfather… was a firefighter in Montreal. So, I think it runs in the family, it’s in a family’s blood in a certain way. And over the years, well, we were able to fulfil our dream and have the life we wanted. And it’s always nice to see the torch being passed from generation to generation, to see that there’s someone else taking it up.