you need more of the educational aspect. So what we've been struggling
with and I think have succeeded in doing, is merging that training with that
education.”

This is the lifetime professional learning process that the JIBC’s
founders had in mind. There is a level of education for every need. The Insti-
tute also offers courses for those focused on becoming leaders in their fire
departments: that content-rich Fire Service Leadership Diploma Program
intended to give an understanding of the overall fire service, plus tools that
will allow the diploma’s holder to enjoy overall certification in Fire Office I
to IV levels of the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 1021 Stan-
dard.

At the request of some fire departments, pre-employment training
has recently been augmented with the following courses: Hazardous Mate-
rials Response; First Responder Level III with Automatic Defibrillators and
Spinal Management endorsement; Vehicle Rescue; Shipboard Fire Fighting;
Rope Rescue; Pumps and Pumping; and Emergency Vehicle Driving. All
of these additions to the fire fighter’s toolbox contribute to the Career Fire
Fighter Pre-employment Certificate, which prepares a trainee to apply for a
career position.

This is what it takes to be a fire fighter in B.C. But getting in the door
for the first time is intimidating. The price an aspiring candidate pays for
access to the profession is steep. The preliminaries include a medical exam
and a job-specific physical assessment that has candidates complete fire
fighting related tasks (shuttle two four-inch hose rolls and a 165-pound
dummy back and forth [eight times] over a twenty-metre distance). The
classes of generally twenty students pay their own tuition and, if successful
after twelve weeks of training, join a pool of program graduates from which
departments can recruit.

You may have wanted to be a fire fighter all your life. It makes no
difference. You have to want to be one so badly that you willingly spend
your own money and long months of your life to earn a certificate from
the Fire and Safety Division that enables you to compete for that job. Those
succeeding display commitment and courage. As the chief of the New York
Fire Department said in the early twentieth century, in a quotation that
could now be genderless, “When a man becomes a fireman, his greatest act
of bravery has been accomplished. What he does after that is all in the line
of work.”

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