The Cobourg Fire Fighters Museum, willing to sign a 20-year lease, will have a new home at the Cobourg Memorial Arena. 

After the arena closed in 2019, museum officials approached the Town of Cobourg about becoming the new tenant. Council considered multiple groups and chose the Fire Fighters Museum, which has been without a home for five years since it was forced out of its former Port Hope location due to the ongoing low level radioactive waste cleanup. 

Renovations will still be required to insulate the arena and bring it up to current accessibility standards.

While the agreement hasn’t been signed, the museum was granted access to the arena until next June to hold fundraisers, such as Sunday’s Northumberland Antique/Vintage Show and Sale.

Will Lambert, former chair and current curator, said a large space for its collection and one that could be open year-round rather than the seasonal operation in the past.

“I know we’ve been shuttered for five years, but we are not going away. We are going to come back bigger and better than ever,” Lambert said. “We have an amazing collection. Even though we’ve been closed over the last five years, we’ve continued to add to the collection. We’re now up to 14 fire trucks and just tons of other stuff. We have six storage locations right now - we’re jammed full - so we can put on an amazing national-calibre collection and we can make this thing fly. We can run it year-round and we can make it really special.”

In addition to fire trucks, the museum has a collection of uniforms and shoulder patches from departments across the country, hand tools, radios and more.

"It's a huge collection and its got tons of room to grow because it is coast-to-coast," Lambert said.

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