Allison Leavitt grew up on a team of volunteer firefighters: her Dad, Rick Leavitt, has served at Station 3 for over 25 years and her uncle, Donald, at Station 2 for as many. Both are Division Captains.

Her cousin, Brad Leavitt, and her partner, Jacob Kuipers, are also both on the force.

At the same time as volunteering as a firefighter came naturally, it also transformed her life.

The Home Hardware employee signed up in 2018. That involved a grueling day of training, the try-outs for would-be recruits.

As I listen to this account of basic operations, any thoughts I may have had about maybe volunteering myself are quickly extinguished. It’s not for the faint of heart.

But she laughs at that idea. “It’s called Recruit Fit Day, and it was pretty basic when I look back on it.”

If you call jumping around in full firefighting gear, which includes a 30 lb Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus — an oxygen tank on your back attached via hose to a breathing mask fitted over your head — “pretty basic,” well, ok.

Ms. Leavitt walked across a 6 x 6 beam, travelled across uneven ground, and performed a search and rescue wearing a blindfold — a black balaclava over her eyes so she couldn’t see anything, to mimic night-time search conditions.

All with the 30 lb oxygen tank firmly in tow.

She also dragged a hose up an elevated platform ladder, and practiced spraying it, still in full gear.

As I listen to this account of basic operations, any thoughts I may have had about maybe volunteering myself are quickly extinguished.

As a member of the volunteer firefighting force, Ms. Leavitt is available for anything and everything. The volunteer firefighters in a specific unit — there are 10 across the County — are called every time Fire and Rescue is called to that area.

Ms. Leavitt is a member of the Picton unit (Station 1), which serves both Picton and North Marysburgh, so she’s called a lot. Most recently she was on Hilltop Road fighting a barn fire with members of Station 3, in South Marysburgh. She was also on the Adolphus Reach in June when a row of three cottages caught fire down a long laneway at the water’s edge.

That was an all-nighter.

“There’s no point going to bed when you get home after a night like that,” she says, like a true twenty-something — she turns 30 this year — “because you have to get up and go to work in an hour.”

Volunteers are paged to help in any emergency: medical assistance, vehicle accidents, and fires in any location.

She now completes both weekly and monthly training nights, which she loves because she learns new skills, such as water pump training or operating portable water tanks, “vehicle extrication” — getting  passengers out from vehicles whose doors won’t open, which means cutting the doors off — and other useful emergency skills.

Volunteer firefighters do a lot, and in very partial recognition of all that is required, there is pay for the hours on call and spent training. But when I ask Ms. Leavitt how much, she looks blank.

“I think about $20 an hour. But I’d have to check,” she says.

I press a bit. “So, if you go out on a call and you are there five hours, you are paid about $100?” 

 “I think so, yeah,” she says doubtfully. “That sounds about right. But I would have to double check.”

The sense of reward Ms. Leavitt feels is far deeper that financial.

“People only call us when it’s the worst day of their lives. Being there to help is the reward.

“Their house is burning down, or they’ve been involved in a serious accident. It means a great deal to me to be able to be there and help.”

There is also the teamwork, and relationships built on trust.

“The members of the squad really rely on each other. Lives are at risk, both ours and those of the people we’re helping.”

“It’s not a bad thing when you are in pain, you’ve been in an accident, or you’re stressed, and a woman shows up. There’s a warmth in that that people respond to.”

Allison Leavitt

Ms. Leavitt is one of six women on the volunteer force — and 144 men. Likewise, on the regular force, there is just one woman on a team of just under 15. While she notes things are harder for women in male-dominated fields, she says she has never once felt unwelcome at Station 1. “Sometimes I even wonder if they even notice,” she laughs. “They treat me exactly the same.”

“When I was a kid, there was no such thing as women firefighters so it’s so nice to see some, and to have that number grow would be just great.

“It’s not a bad thing when you are in pain, you’ve been in an accident, or you’re stressed, and a woman shows up. There’s a warmth in that that people respond to.”

In addition to six years with the volunteer team at Station 1 (Picton) and Station 10 (North Marysburgh), Ms. Levitt has completed the training required for a Firefighter 1 rank and is about to complete Firefighter 2 in September.

The courses require about three weeks of physical training spread out over anywhere from a year to a few months, and a two-hour exam on which a grade of 70% is required to pass.

That’s quite a volunteer job, I note.

But she shrugs, “anyone can do it,” she says, with an understatement that is clearly part of her character. But then she thinks again.

“Well, anyone with dedication and commitment. And a willingness to learn. You have to love learning new things. Training and keeping your skills up is a never-ending cycle of learning. You don’t want to miss a single opportunity to get better.”

Inspired by her work, and by mentors she has met on both the volunteer and regular firefighter forces, Ms. Leavitt is training at Belleville’s Loyalist College to become a paramedic. This training too requires a grade of 70% in every course to pass — but of course by now she’s an expert at that.