A fundraising calendar featuring members of the Creighton Fire Department has become a hot seller.
The calendar features several members of the department in various poses and states of undress, with at least one new photo featured each month.
A Creighton firefighter calendar had been discussed as a fundraising measure over the last two years, but the idea was not seriously considered until late 2017.
“It started out as a joke,” said Marshall Manns, a Creighton fire captain.
“Then we thought, ‘Well, maybe we could do it’, then this year, we just said, ‘Why don’t we do it? What do we got to lose?’”
Once the office joke turned into a serious idea, planning began. Manns said coordinating the calendar took three weeks in total, starting with one key question – who’s going to take the pictures?
“When we were talking about it, we said that if we got some pictures done, we would get a good photographer to do it,” said Manns.
Enter Denare Beach-based photographer Brandy Bloxom. Bloxom had worked with the fire department in the past, putting together a farewell photo package for a former firefighter who had moved away.
“There was a guy who was leaving the department, he was going for Ontario, and she took some amazing photos of all of us kind of as a going-away present for him. It was pretty unanimous that we wanted her to do the pictures for us. When we asked her, she was all over it,” he said.
Bloxom and the firefighters had a short time to shoot and assemble the calendar – the production was done in two weeks.
“We did four photo shoots in two weeks, different locations, different days,” said Bloxom.
The finished product runs the gamut from the tame to the bold, going from simple headshots to more tastefully risqué poses. One member of the department is seen holding flowers and wearing a wedding dress along with his fire helmet, while another photo shows a fireman wearing nothing more than his helmet and a coiled length of hose.
Each member of the department had creative input for their photo.
“For me to figure out what each of them were like and what they wanted to portray, it was challenging but good,” said Bloxom.
“Some guys wanted to be more comical, some guys wanted to show off a bit, some guys were a little more reserved.”
“We thought it would be a good stocking stuffer, gag gift, whatever,” said Manns, who added the reaction he’d received from the community had been mostly positive.
“We get a lot of compliments, a lot of ‘good on you, guys! It took a lot of balls to do that!’ We might get teased a little bit about it, but we’ve done well with sales.”
Manns mentioned that some of his co-workers with Hudbay have cracked jokes, along with some members of the award-winning mine rescue team he coaches and trains.
“I get it from some of my mine rescue guys, some of the guys from Flin Flon, but we can just say, ‘Oh, you’re just jealous!’” said Manns.
Bloxom said she had been approached by a Flin Flon firefighter hoping to do a similar calendar for next year.
“Everybody loves it. Everybody couldn’t wait to get it and see what was on the inside. The guys all have inside jokes about each other now and the Flin Flon guys are talking about it and they want to outdo these guys next year,” she said.
The calendar is the first of its kind ever released in Creighton. Manns said it’s been a welcome change from the department’s usual go-to fundraisers.
“It totally is, and that was part of it. We donate a lot of money to the community and scholarships for school. It was, rather than selling raffle tickets, we thought we’d try this and see what kind of response we got,” he said.
Calendars can be purchased from any Creighton Fire Department member or at the Creighton Town Office.
