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Saanich's female firefighters blazing a trail in capital region

It shouldn’t be news that two of the eight new firefighters hired in Saanich are women, but the reality is that Bonnie Fiala and Heather Jaques are the only female career firefighters in the capital region.
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Bonnie Fiala, left, and Heather Jaques, were recently hired by the Saanich Fire Department. "It was important for us, from Day 1, that it is an equal playing field — that we're being evaluated the same and we want to be treated the same as all the other recruits," Fiala says.

It shouldn’t be news that two of the eight new firefighters hired in Saanich are women, but the reality is that Bonnie Fiala and Heather Jaques are the only female career firefighters in the capital region.

That’s two out of approximately 300 career firefighters in Greater Victoria, though many more serve in volunteer brigades.

“I think it’s slowly coming,” said Fiala, a former national-level rower who was on the women’s eight rowing team that competed in the 2004 Athens Olympics.

Of the 130 candidates who applied for the eight Saanich Fire Department jobs, a small handful were women. Many fire chiefs in Greater Victoria said the reason there are so few female firefighters is that very few apply.

Is that because women still see firefighting as a man’s job or because there’s still a perception of an Old Boys club culture within fire halls? Should fire departments actively recruit women to the job?

Fiala, 38, and Jaques, 34, were hired because they were the best candidates, not because the department was trying to fill any sort of quota, their fire chief said.

“It was important for us, from Day 1, that it is an equal playing field — that we’re being evaluated the same and we want to be treated the same as all the other recruits,” Fiala said.

Neither of them pursued a career in firefighting with the goal of being trailblazers for other women.

“For me, it was that personal draw, it wasn’t necessarily anything to do with gender,” said Fiala, who worked with the Ministry of Health in seniors’ fall prevention before moving to this job.

Saanich Fire Chief Mike Burgess said the group of eight new recruits “are the best of the best. And we’re quite pleased to see two females in that group.”

Most career departments require all recruits to have the National Fire Protection Association pre-employment standard, a training course that’s a mix of fire school and boot camp.

Fiala and Jaques both went to a well-known fire academy in Crowley, Texas.

“The number of women going through the pre-employment programs is significantly less than the number of males,” Burgess said.

Saanich deputy fire chief Stephen Hannah said firefighting is such a highly desired job that the department doesn’t actively recruit anyone. It places an ad in the newspaper and dozens of people apply. Hannah said many people are drawn to firefighting by word of mouth from a friend or relative who is a firefighter.

 

That’s how Jaques became interested in firefighting two years ago.

Recently retired from the women’s national rugby team, which took her to the Rugby World Cup twice, she was working construction in North Vancouver, when someone at her gym raised the idea of a career in firefighting.

“It wasn’t until someone suggested it to me that I thought, ‘Why didn’t I think of this sooner?’ ” Jaques said.

The Saskatoon native said when she finished high school, the natural path was college or university. “I never really thought [about] police or fire or RCMP.”

There are few statistics on female firefighters in Canada, but the 2006 census found about 3.6 per cent of firefighters across the country are women.

Women are better represented in volunteer departments. Metchosin Volunteer Fire has a female chief, Stephanie Dunlop, as does Port Renfrew Volunteer Fire, where 24-year-old Chief Chelsea Kuzman has recruited several women as volunteer firefighters.

Langford, View Royal, Colwood and Sooke have all had female volunteer firefighters.

Dunlop said she started as a volunteer firefighter in the Okanagan and moved to Metchosin about 12 years ago. She became chief in 2008.

Dunlop isn’t sure recruiting women to firefighting is the right approach.

“We don’t want to be the token female firefighter. We just want to be firefighters,” she said. “We just want to do something that we love to do.”

Dunlop said while the “Old Boys club” culture is definitely changing, some people still react with surprise when she tells them she’s the chief.

“A supplier called once and said, ‘Can I talk to the chief?’ And I said, ‘Yes, you’re talking to her.’ And he paused and there was deadpan silence,” Dunlop recalls.

After his pitch, Dunlop said she would have to talk to her supply manager before she could make a decision.

“He said, ‘So you don’t actually make the decisions.’ The whole attitude was, ‘You’re not really the chief, you don’t really make the decisions.’ ”

 

Dunlop said it comes down to the fact that “people are not used to having women in the fire service. But that’s a changing trend. We can do just as good a job as our male counterparts.”

Police departments have done a much better job of recruiting women, said David Hodgins, an Esquimalt councillor and former B.C. Fire Commissioner.

As an example of the persistent antiquated view of firefighting as a man’s job, Hodgins pointed to the uproar over sexualized Halloween costumes for little girls, including a female firefighter costume that consisted of a short dress and fascinator instead of coveralls and helmet.

“We start kids as young as five six and seven to believe men are macho firefighters and girls can’t do that,” Hodgins said.

“Well, guess what? There are some amazing female firefighters out there that bring so much to the table.”

Hodgins said fire departments should actively recruit women to make them aware of a career opportunity they might not have thought of.

 

And there’s a fierce debate about whether fire departments should change the hiring standards, to move away from such an intense focus on physical strength.

Hodgins believes change is needed and that there’s more to being a firefighter than being able to do 100 chin-ups.

“No one wants to lower the standard, but the standard needs to be reviewed,” Hodgins said. “The standard that we’re using needs to actively represent the basic job requirements.”

In 1999, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that a B.C. forest firefighter was the victim of sexual discrimination when she was fired for not meeting the mandatory fitness requirements. The defence argued that men have an unfair advantage in such tests because women, on average, have less aerobic capacity.

The woman’s union agreed, saying the fitness standards were needlessly high and excluded women who were just as capable of fighting forest fires.

Megan Sabell, a fire prevention officer at Victoria Fire Department who moved to the job from fire dispatch, said there should be one standard, and for good reason.

“It’s a very physically demanding job, and if you can’t meet that standard, it could be somebody’s life,” she said. The standards “are tough for a reason, because it’s a tough job.”

As for having more women working in fire halls, both Fiala and Jaques said the change is happening gradually, the way it should be.

“Maybe increased exposure in recent years has helped women to see that they have a place [in a fire department],” Fiala said.

kderosa@timescolonist.com