Deck the Firehouse: New Canaan Firefighters Carry On Local Tradition 

Sven Englund, joined out front of the New Canaan Firehouse on this crisp, clear Sunday morning by a half-dozen fellow firefighters, cupped his mouth and called up a ladder leaning against the 1938 structure at Main and Locust. There, Mark Savini was about to affix a loop for hanging a string of white pine roping, wrapped with white Christmas lights, to adorn the firehouse’s façade through the holiday. “Tighter,” Englund, a volunteer firefighter here since 1978, instructed good-naturedly. “It’s going to be too low. Don’t let it drop below the lintel.”

Within a few hours, the guys had looped 375 feet of the roping, bunting-like, along the roofline, hung six red-ribboned wreaths (with another large one out back) and framed in pine needles the four bays and entrance door at the iconic Main Street firehouse—an undisrupted, understood annual tradition of our town on the first Sunday of December that goes back as many generations as the firefighters themselves can remember.

Did You Hear … ?

We heard that a New Canaan woman who learned last Monday (the eve of Election Day) that she needed to have open-heart surgery felt her vote was important enough that she arranged to cast an emergency absentee ballot. ***

Though about a dozen New Canaan constituents entered “write-in” candidates on their ballots, just one of the names put down on Election Day counted (write-in candidates must register ahead of time with the Secretary of the State). Apparently, two or three New Canaanites put down “None of the Above” in the governor’s category. ***

Word is that the owner of the Great Dane who on the morning of Sept. 17 broke free from its leash and attacked a far smaller dog (Cocker mix) on Elm Street is refusing to pay for the Cocker’s vet bill.

Did You Hear … ?

The all-volunteer Youth Sports Committee—a Board of Selectmen-appointed group formed to help with the important work of overseeing the private organizations that run youth sports in New Canaan—is getting better at filing meeting minutes. A look at records at the Town Clerk’s office shows that minutes from the Sept. 15 meeting were received on Oct. 3—though that’s not within the legally required seven days, it’s a significant improvement for the committee, which filed its Feb. 6 meeting minutes on Aug.