Town of Westlock Volunteer Fire Department Captain Bill Smith added another medal to his lapel when he received the Alberta Emergency Service Medal Nov. 14.
On behalf of the Town of Westlock, mayor Ralph Leriger presented Smith with the bronze bar and rosette for his 22 years of service.
“This bar is issued to firefighters who demonstrated over 22 years of good service, loyalty and conduct in public service and emergency public service,” Leriger said.
“Certainly you have demonstrated this and much more to the residents of Westlock. On behalf of myself and all of council, I’m pleased to present you with your 22-year bar.”
Chief Stuart Koflick told Smith he would be receiving a medal, but Smith was still shocked.
“I never knew it until Stuart passed me the agenda that they had at the meeting,” he said.
The bar is just another addition to Smith’s well-decorated lapel, which includes a Good Conduct Medal from the military, a Government of Canada medal for 20 years of service, and a provincial medal for completing 12 years of firefighting with Suncor Energy.
Although this medal recognized Smith for 22 years of service as a civilian, he has been fighting fires for a lot longer than that.
In 1974 he joined the Canadian Armed Forces and when straight into firefighting. In January of 1975, he completed his rookie firefighting courses with the military and later advanced to corporal status and then to the officer’s equivalent in 1986.
“My dad was a military firefighter and up until I was 19 years of age I hung around those people,” Smith recalled.
“Some of them weren’t much older than I was and worked for him. I have to say that it’s intriguing; it’s a job that changed from day to day. There was so much to learn, it was never the same.”
He came off of sea duty in 1986 and three years later decided it was time to get out of the military. That July he was hired to Suncor’s fire department in Fort McMurray.
Smith worked for Suncor on their medic-fire emergency services team for 21 years and 16 of those years as an EMT.
“We had EMTs, paramedics, RNs (Registered Nurses), and firefighters,” Smith said. “Everybody was either one of the medical, and everybody was a firefighter on the shift.”
In 2010 Smith and his wife decided to leave Fort McMurray and settle in Westlock.
“I was driving her crazy and she told me to go find something to do, so I joined the town fire department,” he said with a laugh. “And I’ve been with them ever since.”
With over four decades of firefighting under his belt, the captain has a wide range of training, from structural to ship work, airfield crash rescues, confined spaces, high angles, EMT and driving.
“It’s never boring,” he said. “You’re always doing something that’s different that some people look at you and say, ‘Isn’t that hard?’ Yeah, it might have been a little hard but when we got into that, it was fun.”
Although he didn’t shy away from acknowledging the difficult calls, the unexpected times when people came into the fire hall to thank him for pulling them out of a car, or doing a good job makes it worthwhile.
“You either love it, or you hate it and I guess I love it because I’ve been with it for that long and I still love doing it,” he said. “That gratification is always there when you’re working with people. That’s another thing that keeps you going to it. The crappy times, well that’s part of the job and that’s things we can’t control.”
Smith said having his family by his side also made the job easier because they understood what he was going through and have felt the same way.
One of his sons is a police officer and his wife worked as a 911 dispatcher in Fort McMurray and would sometimes be the one dispatching the Suncor team — and her husband — to a call for mutual aid.
At 67, Smith said he will continue to volunteer for as long as he can walk, but that as 70 looms nearer, he would consider retiring then.
“One day I’m going to have to sit down with myself and when I really feel I can’t do it, I’ll have to say that’s enough,” he said.
“It’s a career that I’ve enjoyed my whole life so I have no regrets in any way, shape or form.”
