8

Learning the Ropes

I WAS A BUNDLE OF nerves on the first day of drill school, but I was excited to start a real career other than the pencil-fixing or bone-crushing gig my guidance counsellor’s aptitude test had me pegged for. The chief of the job stood in front of us and welcomed us to the TFD — 150 years of tradition unimpeded by progress. He said his only regret was that there was an empty seat up front for a new recruit who couldn’t, for family reasons, join the class. He went on to say that this new recruit was a well-known professional football player for the Ottawa Rough Riders of the Canadian Football League, Maurice Doyle. All the guys in the class nodded in recognition of the star. Being the artsy type rather than a sports guy, I played along. “Maurice Doyle. Yeah, a big black guy, right?” I said, playing the odds. Nope. He started his career with Toronto in the next recruit class. A few years later I did end up working with Moe on several fires. He’s a good friend and first-class guy in every respect. His son is now a firefighter with Toronto Fire.

A man from the Republic of China was also in our class on an exchange program. His English was limited and my Chinese was a bit rusty, so our communications were a tad strained. No worries. The chief explained how progressive the Toronto Fire Department would be and went on to introduce another recruit: Peter Chow, a Canadian-born man of Chinese descent.

The chief got both of them up in front of the class and had the two firefighters greet each other, a hands-across-the-ocean kind of thing. Great photo op. Flashbulbs flashed. The two men smiled and said a few words to each other — and that’s when we discovered they spoke completely different dialects. The uncomfortable silence ground away at our bones as the tender moment crashed and burned.

After the chief had finished his speech, a guy from the firefighters’ credit union showed up. He told us to sign up to start having our paycheques deposited in the special financial institution run by the brothers. “Get yourself a loan, kid. They aren’t going to fire you if you owe the city money,” he advised.

I soon had awesome job security. Funny, the first thing they told us about being a firefighter — as opposed to a fireman, which is a person who shovels coal on trains — was how great the benefits and pension were. Benefits? Hmmm … Cool fire hats and boots. Ring the bell. Slide down the pole. I got it. I leaned over to the guy next to me and asked what a pension was. “Don’t get married” was all he said.

In 1985, the fire department in Toronto was run in a very military fashion. The upper echelon were all veterans of the Korean War. They were tough as nails, and they wanted the men on the tfd to be just as tough as they were. That didn’t bode well for me. I was young and excited — but very young. The first fire truck that I drove on the training ground was a backbone of the tfd, a 1954 American LaFrance pumper. Ten years older than I was. Don’t they have a newer truck for me to learn on?

Like little soldiers we froze our asses off on the training ground, raising ladders, dragging hose, reloading the hose we had just pulled off the truck, and my favourite, spraying water from the top of the ladder one hundred feet in the air. The wind would blow the water back in your face, filling your boots and eventually turning you into a Popsicle.

It turned out that years of training for cold weather by playing road hockey in Geraldton doesn’t mean shit when you’re soaked to your underwear and dragging hose around. Standing frozen as a cigar-store Indian, I asked my tough-as-nails instructor through chattering teeth if I could sit in the truck during a fire to stay warm. That was a source of guffaws on the job for years.

My class of thirty green recruits was split up into groups according to height. Think about that for a second. If you have four guys of different heights carrying a very heavy ladder, the tall dudes will be bearing the brunt of the weight and the little guys will dangle underneath like laundry on a clothesline. I was in the Smurf group.

We drove 1950s LaFrance ladder trucks, or aerials, as they’re called in Toronto. They were the same fire trucks they used in Los Angeles … in the 1950s. They also had California cabs, meaning there was no roof over the driver and crew. They were built like that, according to the 1950s owner’s manual, so when we pulled up to a hotel or skyscraper fire, the driver could see up above and get a better idea of where to position the truck for rescue operations. I get the whole rescue thing, but I still found that design feature puzzling; February in Canada is a tad cool to be cruising in a convertible with the lid down. I’m no automotive engineer, but I’d definitely throw in a roof and maybe a heater.

Another point about the “California Cooler” missed by the sharp minds in the tfd’s purchasing department was that during a fire, dozens of hose lines are deployed by gorilla men and the fire is put out with — wait for it — water. Thousands of gallons of water. It would have been nice to have a roof on the truck to keep the seats dry. During those cold Canadian Februaries, water that fell in the cab would turn to — wait for it again — ice! (We learned this from the Popsicle exercise.) Not only do you end up exhausted from dragging hose and smashing walls, when you return to the truck you have to take an axe to the steering wheel to break off the ice so you can drive the hunk of frozen rust home.

ANOTHER PURCHASING DEPARTMENT BRAINSTORM OCCURRED during the late 1990s. Toronto used to be a busy shipping port for everything from sugar and rubber to tractors. In 1965 the city had purchased a new fireboat, the William Lyon Mackenzie. It could pump more water than ten fire trucks and had a snorkel basket that rose fifty feet above the water, where it could be used as a vantage point for firefighting and rescue operations alongside large ships. It could pump foam to fight oil and fuel fires, had a galley for the crew with enough provisions for several days away from port, and a hospital bed for emergency medical care during an incident. It was even a Coast Guard–certified icebreaker that kept the shipping lanes open for the ferry that was used by the people who lived on Toronto Island year-round.

The William Lyon Mackenzie served the city well and earned a place in the history books as an essential part of Toronto’s fire-fighting arsenal. But in the nineties, its increasingly expensive upkeep and the drying up of ocean-going shipping traffic meant that its days were numbered. Although the city still needed a fireboat for the buildings on the island, the Mackenzie seemed like an albatross. The incoming fire chief made a decision to replace the ageing craft, and the purchasing department issued a tender for two smaller and lighter quick-attack fireboats.

To much fanfare, a contract was made with a company from Vancouver that specialized in aluminum watercraft. The price was exceptional, jobs would be kept in Canada, and the new boats’ performance would blow away the dinosaur now docked at the marine fire station — a win-win-win scenario. In those tough economic times, the city could potentially save millions with the lighter boats, which, unlike the Mackenzie, didn’t need a large crew and expensive upkeep. Heck, the annual cost savings were so huge they even bandied around the idea of buying a third boat.

Months later, the light-attack boats were built and the customizing of each craft began. As items from the marine firefighting crew’s wish list rolled in, the special additions added to the original cost of the project. Slowly the costs rose. Cool fire-engine red paint. Emergency lights? Yeah, top-of-the-line! Hydraulic hoist? Of course! What rescue boat didn’t have one? Sonar, GPS, and top-notch radio communications? Hell, yeah, throw in the whole package! Motors?

Wait, no motors? Christ, no wonder they were so cheap. Again, I’m no engineering wizard, but I would’ve asked for motors … just for that whole mobility thing.

The bosses did their best to keep this blunder under wraps, but with firefighters being the overgrown children they are, it didn’t take long for it to get out. A prankster jumped on the news. (Let’s call him “Anybody But Me.”) In short order an ad was placed in The Boat Trader: “Eighty-foot icebreaker for sale. Fish finder. Sleeps one. Cherry-picker basket. Like new. Six thousand dollars, or will trade for two light-attack boats.” It used the chief’s name and home address too — pretty funny stuff. (Note: Lawyers have no sense of humour.)

EVERY DAY AT THE FIRE academy was like day camp. We worked hard studying hydraulics and building codes as well as medical instruction in the classroom. But the real fun was during the live fire training. With my fire gear on I almost felt like Superman. Indestructible. Nothing could hurt me.

Then the instructor showed our class of recruits a film about the potential dangers of firefighting. He said, “If you change your mind about being a firefighter after seeing the film, there’s no shame in that.”

The lights dimmed. The projector rolled and the recruits sat back to watch.

One of the first scenes showed a fire in a propane plant in the 1960s. A large body of fire was consuming a propane tank the size of a railway car. The firefighters were standing their ground, pouring water on the flames, when one end of the tank blew out sending the massive cylinder across the yard like a rocket. Several firefighters were mowed down by the cylinder, while the fireball from the explosion swept across others, evocative of the Hindenburg disaster when men fled the flaming dirigible only to be cut down by the fire.

Another scene showed happy firefighters on the back of a pumper, waving to the camera as they race to a fire at a construction site. When they arrive a moment later, a dynamite shed on site blows up. The film shows the fireball and subsequent destruction, while playing the audio of the radio transmission from the incoming chief: “Dispatch, send a couple of ambulances. There’s been a massive explosion. It blew the windshield out of our car… and we’re a quarter mile away.”

The class was quiet. There was some stirring among us young eager recruits, but it was clear to all: This is a dangerous job. I no longer felt indestructible. I felt vulnerable. The images of that film, seen over thirty years ago, are still fresh in my mind and remind me of how fortunate I was to come out in one piece.