The longest running social event in the city continued, Saturday, when the Dauphin Firefighters Association hosted its annual Firefighters Ball.
The soldout event was a fund-raiser for DFD’s Restoration Fund, while recognizing firefighters for their efforts over the past year.
This year, Sam Smith and Oleksiy Vlasov received their Level I accreditation badges, which were pinned on their uniforms by their wives.
The Darren Killen Most Dedicated Firefighter Award went to Alvin Bogoslowski, who has served on the fire department for 43 years and continues to have a near 100 per cent attendance rate at training and calls.
In making the announcement, fire chief Cam Abrey said Bogoslowski has been involved with pretty much every construction project around the department since he started. He was one of the key members of the group that, along with Killen, built the shed that stores the antique fire trucks behind the fire station.
“When I started this bell project, it was both Darren and Alvin that took it away from me and completed the construction of it,” Abrey added.
Bogoslowski keeps busy cutting the grass, taking out the garbage and recycling, mopping the floor and then he’s in the radio room keeping an eye on Gary Holyoake.
Bogoslowski is not one to sit around, always busy with something, Abrey said, adding he is more than willing to throw on his gear and jump on a truck, but his skills are needed at the station filling air bottles and repairing the small motors and tools.
“We all tease Alvin that we’ve never heard him curse, ever, no matter what’s going on. We even asked his family, and they said they haven’t heard him drop one little “F’ bomb ever,” Abrey said.
Five firefighters were nominated for this year’s Jack Carey Memorial Firefighter of the Year Award.
All were excellent candidates, Abrey said, but the election process showed one clear winner, Bruce Bouttell.
Bouttell, Abrey said, is an individual that gives back to the department and over the past year, has excelled as a member.
Bouttell has stepped up and volunteered for every extracurricular event the fire department takes part in and even assisted in a large way with last year’s ball, even though he only had one month in as a member.
Over the past 12 months Bouttell has developed a strange relationship with DFD’s mascot Sparky the Fire Dog, volunteering to wear the suit every chance he gets.
Bouttell joined DFD in October 2025, but as mentioned, he developed the slideshow for the ball thanking sponsors, was involved with the other preparations, and during the July 1 flooding, left his own home traveling over flooded roads to respond to the many calls for service the fire department had and spent most of his day assisting with the evacuation of Dauphin Regional Health Centre.
Most recently, Bouttell has totally overhauled the tracks for the department’s side by side and in doing so, has taken two other new members and mentored them as to the required repairs.
Bouttell has also stepped up and taken on a special project of implementing a new records management software, even so far that he has taken his IT background and identified some deficiencies in the software, has met with the manager of the Provincial 911 Communications Center and the software provider and is working out the bugs in the system prior to many other departments in the Province moving to the same platform.
This is all in addition to assisting with the antique truck restorations.
Bouttell realized Abrey was talking about him when Sparky the Fire Dog was mentioned.
“I had a little bit of an inkling. And then some of the tables started to turn and look at me, so then at that point, I realized he may be talking about me,” he said.
Winning the award means the world to Bouttell.
“It’s an honour to work with such fine human beings and the opportunity to work amongst them is hard to put into words,” he said.
“I think moving from Winnipeg to Dauphin within the last 10 years and Dauphin has been such a welcoming community that I just thought this was a great opportunity to give back to the community. Hence I joined.”
The firefighters that he works with, Bouttell added, are all outstanding individuals.
Having served such a short time with DFD makes winning the award a surprise.
“To me, I just like to help out people. It took me by surprise. It was hard to keep a dry eye walking up to get the award from Cam,” he said.