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Chief Quan - has a nice ring to it! |
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Written by Laura King
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Wednesday,
Sept.
1, 2010
Well, it’s officially official: Lyle Quan, the
deputy chief in Guelph, Ont.,
who writes the Cornerstone and Leadership Forum columns for Fire Fighting in Canada in his
spare time (ha!), becomes chief in Waterloo, Ont.,
on Sept. 20.
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Post-vacation update . . . |
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Written by Laura King
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Monday, Aug. 30, 2010
I’m
getting grief for not keeping up the blog since returning from vacation but I
know you all know what it’s like – e-mails, deadlines, budgets . . . Anyway,
here goes, beginning on a sad note.
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A vacation update . . . |
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Written by Laura King
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Thursday, Aug. 19, 2010
A
vacation update . . .
Yesterday was a work day despite being on
vacation (sound familiar?). It started
with a visit to the Nova Scotia Firefighters School in beautiful Waverley, N.S., on lovely Powder Mill Lake. The word bucolic probably isn’t used often to
describe fire school locations but it was a gorgeous August day under a
vacation-blue sky and the setting was, well, bucolic.
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Run silent, run deep |
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Written by Peter Sells
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August 11, 2010
I watched a great movie on TV
earlier this week, U-571. It's a submarine drama involving espionage and
combat, more or less a WW2 version of The Hunt for Red October. There are
several very suspenseful scenes in which the sailors wait in silence, staring
up as the sonar man reports the splashing of depth charges into the water
above. When a scene like this is filmed well, you can feel the tension in your
neck and shoulders as the actors brace themselves.
Boom. Far away and muffled. Boom! Closer,
sharper and rattling the sub. BOOM! Now the sailors are being tossed around as pipes
split, spewing water and fuel under pressure. How close will the next one be? Which
drum of explosives has our name on it?
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Media manouevers |
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Written by Laura King
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Thursday, Aug. 5, 2010
I just
got back from Vaughan, The City Above Toronto. Well, that’s what it used to be
called but some nasty politics after the 2007 municipal elections resulted in
the slogan being manipulated into The City Above the Law and, well, now it’s
just Vaughan, period – no slogan.
I
digress. I was in Vaughan to interview Fire Chief Greg
Senay, Deputy Chief Glenn Duncan and Emergency Planning Manager Sharon Walker
about the tornado that bounced like a beach ball through Vaughan at supper time on Aug. 20, 2009. We’ll feature the tornado story in the September
issue of Fire Fighting in Canada,
which will focus on disaster management.
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Catching up |
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Written by Laura King
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Thursday, July 29, 2010
Please
excuse the absence – with travel to fire chiefs conferences, a few vacation days
here and there and a rather heinous bout with the flu, it’s been tough to keep
up.
Where to
start? I was just finishing up a column I do for the VFIS newsletter (yes, we’re
everywhere!) focusing on the highlights from the provincial chiefs association
conferences over the spring and summer. It was an interesting exercise and one
worth sharing to prove how hard the people who run these associations are
working for the benefit of the fire service.
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Why soft skills are so hard |
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Written by Peter Sells
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Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Why are
soft skills so hard?
A typical
job call for a fire chief or deputy fire chief’s position requires candidates
to demonstrate some specific competencies such as
Knowledge
of relevant legislation;
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Labour
relations experience;
- Fire
command and emergency management experience;
- Eight
to 10 years of “progressively responsible fire service experience” – (I love
that one, since everyone in the fire service gains progressive responsibility it
is meaningless in this context);
- Post-secondary
education in fire service administration, public administration or business administration;
- Driver’s
licence.
These are all taken from a current job call. I won’t dwell on how poorly written and/or
irrelevant some of them are – that is a topic for another day (competency versus
credential). But I will point out is what is missing.
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More MFCA musings |
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Written by Laura King
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July 14, 2010
The
galling story of a thief in Windsor, Ont., who is stealing brass fittings from
apartment building fire hoses is even more astounding than the theft of
belongings from volunteer firefighters’ vehicles in Bayfield, Ont. – while they
were responding to a call.
Windsor police say that in the last six
months more than 125 fittings have disappeared, presumably sold for scrap
metal.
Makes you
wonder what’s next.
You can
read the Windsor story here and the Bayfield story here.
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