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Editor’s blog from FDIC Atlantic

June 6, 2011

I expect there were some weary firefighters in eastern Canada Monday morning after FDIC Atlantic in beautiful Wolfville, N.S., over the weekend. The mostly volunteer contingent of 500 firefighters from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, P.E.I. and Newfoundland played hard by times but worked equally as hard in dozens of hands-on-training sessions and educational – and extremely entertaining – seminars.

Fire Fighting in Canada and Canadian Firefighter and EMS Quarterly were well represented over the weekend with our own Ed Brouwer (Trainer’s Corner) and Mark van der Feyst (Back to Basics) presenting several workshops, and Dave Hodgins (formerly Leadership Forum and now From the Hip) giving the keynote address after the opening ceremonies at 8 a.m. Saturday morning. Our Firehall Bookstore booth at the trade show, manned by Bookstore manager Becky Atkinson, was swamped – and that’s a good thing!

As is always the case at weekend training sessions, pagers starting pinging Saturday afternoon as the crew from Bridgewater got called to a structure fire that destroyed the 95-year-old Fairview Inn, one of the oldest operating inns in Nova Scotia. You can read that story here.

And, as always, Bob Krause’s presentations on Sunday were packed to the rafters. The battalion chief from Toldeo, Ohio, delivers a no-holds-barred look at firefighter safety in his booming battalion-chief voice, and delegates attend just to see which rookie in the crowd Krause will pick on. Note to next year’s delegates: Rookie firefighters attending Krause’s presentations should not wear bright red baseball hats and sit in the front row!

The hands-on training sessions on forcible entry, auto extrication and the evolution of lines and streams at big fires, plus the live-fire sessions with mobile burn unit from the Nova Scotia Firefighters School, were full to capacity (as was Acadia University’s The Axe pub on Saturday where cover band Signal Hill rocked the house!).

The live-fire sessions with the mobile burn unit from the Nova Scotia Firefighters School was a hit with firefighters at FDIC Atlantic over the weekend. Photo by Laura King.

Congrats to FDIC president Joe Vidito and vice-president Stephen Fenner and their dedicated board members from all over Atlantic Canada for a fantastic weekend. Thanks also to director Lyle Donovan for the ride yesterday to Cape Breton, where I’m on vacation for a few days!

Look for new writers from FDIC Atlantic in future issue of Fire Fighting in Canada and Canadian Firefighter and EMS Quarterly, and photos and stories from departments from all four Atlantic provinces. Check out more photos here.

Next stop: The Newfoundland and Labrador Association of Fire Services annual conference June 17-20.