4.6: Boys Will be Boys

Road To Avonlea: Season 4 (Buy This Season) | 4.1: Tug of War | 4.2: Lady and the Blade | 4.3: Incident at Vernon River | 4.4: Evelyn | 4.5: Moving On | 4.6: Boys Will be Boys | 4.7: The Dinner | 4.8: Heirs and Graces | 4.9: Hearts and Flowers | 4.10: Felicity’s Perfect Beau | 4.11: The Disappearance | 4.12: Home Movie | 4.13: Hearth and Home

When a fire breaks out at the blacksmith shop, Avonlea gets a volunteer fire department, led by Clive Pettibone, the new school teacher, as chief. Under Clive’s leadership, the men approach their training with gung-ho enthusiasm, but know nothing about firefighting.

They get called out on all manner of emergencies: unblocking chimney’s etc…everything but firefighting… until finally a real fire breaks out at the Avonlea school and rages out of control.

Season Four

Faced with a real emergency, the fire brigade stops their petty arguing and works together to overcome disaster. Meanwhile the relationship between Alec King and Clive Pettibone is very strained and has become disruptive in running the fire department. Alec finds Clive at Rose Cottage early one morning and becomes suspicious at Clive’s constant presence at Hetty’s and wants to know exactly what is going on between them. Hetty tells him it is none of his business.

You’re going to fight fires, not parade around town. – Rachel Lynde

In the end, Alec is stunned to learn Hetty and Clive’s secrets: that Hetty is in fact H.E. Le Roi and that Clive is C.L. Small – writers of the popular “pulp novels” everyone is reading. They have been exchanging thoughts and ideas about each others writing and stories.

Notes & Inspirations

• Originally Aired January 31, 1993
• All of the fires in this episode were real. The special effects crew spread “fire gel” on all of the surfaces that they wanted to be on fire and then quickly lit it all with propane torches when the cameras started rolling. The fire gel only burned for a couple of minutes before being extinguished so nothing really had a chance to burn.
• The fire wagon was a collaboration between the animal wranglers (who supplied the wagon), the Art Department (who designed the tank and pumps), the carpenters and painters (who built and painted it) and the special effects crew (who made the pump “work”). The pump didn’t really function; the effects crew used a gas powered pump off camera to make water come out of the hose for the burning schoolhouse scene.