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Flashpoint blog |
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Written by Peter Sells
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Last year in my column about emotional intelligence I wrote about how a firefighter, especially
in a command role, would benefit from the ability to manage emotions in an
inherently chaotic situation. The key point was that our objective is to bring
rationality to a chaotic situation, to be part of the solution by avoiding
becoming part of the problem. This past weekend I saw why it is so important
that we achieve that objective.
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Flashpoint blog |
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Written by Peter Sells
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Earlier this year I wrote about the attempt made by
the Retail, Wholesale and
Department Store Union (RWDSU) to organize the volunteer firefighters of the
Sudbury Fire Department. I drew a comparison between the situation faced by
volunteer firefighters in many parts of Canada and the schtick of the late,
great Rodney Dangerfield. Essentially, volunteers do not get the respect they
deserve. Within their communities, yes, they
are the heroes and leaders that are looked up to in exactly the same way as
their brothers and sisters in career departments. But when it comes to recognition within the
greater fire service, volunteers are often unfairly regarded as second-class
citizens.
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Flashpoint blog |
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Written by Peter Sells
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In my previous blog, I discussed how the Canadian
government does nothing to level the playing field among communities that can
afford top-notch fire protection and those that cannot. My thanks to those who
kept the discussion going. This time I would like to recognize that there are
fire service organizations across Canada that aren’t willing to simply accept
the status quo – organizations that pull themselves up by the bootstraps and
strive to meet their challenges despite having little or no budget and, in some
cases, no fire protection infrastructure.
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Flashpoint blog |
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Written by Peter Sells
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March 18, 2009,
A quick look at the sports culture in the U.S. and Canada:
Baseball – played on a field featuring a mound of
dirt;
NASCAR – races are run on tracks with steep banks;
Football – the field is slightly crowned to allow
drainage;
Golf – don’t we all wish that the greens were
perfectly flat?
Soccer – see football, above.
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Flashpoint blog |
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Written by Peter Sells
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Feb. 18, 2009
In one of those weird coincidences of history, like
Harry Houdini dying on Halloween, we were reminded a few days ago, Feb. 12 to
be exact, that both Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were celebrating their
200th birthdays. What were the chances that two of the pivotal minds
of the nineteenth century would have been born on the same day? Don’t get me
started, or I will calculate the actual chances of that – it’s just an
expression, OK?
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Smoke, fire and coincidence |
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Written by Laura King
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Feb. 6, 2009
You may have read in this week’s newspapers about firefighters in
Baddeck, N.S., who rescued the driver and five
passengers from an Acadian Lines bus that left the Trans-Canada Highway and plunged into the icy Baddeck River.
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Observations on a February day |
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Written by Laura King
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Feb. 4, 2009
Ah, winter in Canada. Freshly fallen snow. Awesome
skiing. And fires. Lots and lots of fires. Every morning we (either me or my
editorial assistant) search the news wires for items to post on the home page
of our website. And every morning lately there have been stories of fire deaths.
There’s nothing new about this today – it’s just an observation on the morning
after a little girl was tossed to safety from a second-storey window in a Toronto townhouse but a 63-year-old woman
died after the oxygen tank in her bedroom exploded. Her husband – now a widower
– says he expects she was having a smoke. Unbelievable.
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Sprinkler issue gets attention |
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Written by Laura King
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Jan. 25
Blog
reader Tony Porcaro hit the nail on the head when he posted comments on this
site on Sunday, noting that the sprinkler issue is becoming a political
football. He also noted the editorial in Saturday’s Toronto Star (which I had
read shortly before his comments arrived in my e-mail in box) that listed
several reasons (or, more aptly, excuses) why politicians should examine this
issue more thoroughly and not just bow to pressure from firefighters to force
operators of private nursing homes to install sprinkler systems. It’s like
bicycle helmets for kids, mouth guards for minor hockey players and seatbelts
for everyone: how many vulnerable seniors have to die in nursing home fires
before we give our heads a collective shake and wonder what in the name of time
we were thinking?
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