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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