Ethan Skolnik, Christopher Pucci, Dante Orr and Malia Ollen have taken up temporary residence in Sun Peaks as they undergo hands-on firefighting training with Sun Peaks Fire Rescue.
The Work Experience Program (WEP) started in 2007 as a way to boost membership over the summer, Fire Chief Dean Schiavon told SPIN.
Over the course of six months, Schiavon said the prospective career firefighters will be doing wildland firefighting training, emergency medical response training and the The National Fire Protection Association program which gives them driver and operator training with a fire apparatus (truck).
This year’s recruits have all traveled from their homes in eastern Canada, and told SPIN how friendly and welcoming they feel the people in Sun Peaks have been during their first couple of weeks here.
Ethan Skolnik
Ethan Skolnik, 23 years old, traveled here from Ontario. There, he has experience in volunteer firefighting in Elizabethtown-Kitley.
Originally from Montreal, Skolnik would’ve had to get recertified in French if he chose to move back home to pursue firefighting, so he remained in Ontario after completing the one year pre service firefighting program there in Brockville.
“I learn a lot better in English,” he explained, even though he can read and speak French as well.
As a very active person, he said he was always interested in firefighting.
He enjoyed the sense of camaraderie sports such as hockey, which he’s played his whole life, gave him and saw this in firefighting as well. “A lot of things there I was passionate about,” he said when looking into firefighting. “Saving people, helping people and being within a community.”
The small town atmosphere and sense of community drew him in to Sun Peaks’ Work Experience Program.
Dante Orr
25-year-old Dante Orr was born in Toronto and grew up just north of there, in the Vaughan area.
“Originally I went into school for physiotherapy and nursing and that stuff,” he said. He ended up getting a degree in kinesiology at York University and had a job for four years as a kinesiologist and physio assistant.
Though he told SPIN how the job was beneficial to him in developing life skills, namely navigating the “work world” and interacting with people, he chose to switch paths and pursue firefighting.
He was interested in firefighting, but took the post secondary route after tearing his ACL while playing varsity basketball.
“I was out for the rest of the grade 12 year and I was like, okay, I guess I can’t do firefighting,” he said. “So I decided to go to university instead.”
Firefighting, he said, “gives a good mix of physical stuff, teamwork, talking with people, interacting with the public.”
Part of his mindset in pursuing firefighting is that even with these skills, you have to enjoy it to be able to continue working to get better.
“I’m willing to do more and read more and just keep myself up to-date so I can be better at my job,” he said.
Malia Ollen
Originally from Newmarket, Ont., 21-year-old Malia Ollen said she moved around a lot, though in the same area north of Toronto.
As a very active person, she wanted to do something that involved physical activity rather than working at a desk.
“I went to a sports high school, which I really loved,” she said. “I went there for gymnastics and ski racing, and I did a little bit of track there too.” Part of the reason she chose the Sun Peaks Work Experience Program is because of skiing and the mountains.
“I dropped out and pursued firefighting instead,” she said, after explaining she went to university for a year. “Which is what I wanted to do originally, but I was a little bit hesitant, just because I didn’t really know how to get there.”
Part of her inspiration was a good friend’s dad, who’s a firefighter himself. “He was the one that kind of pushed me to believe in myself and go for it.”
“I absolutely loved it,” she said about the pre-service program she did in Toronto at Seneca College. “When I got there, I was also hoping that there were other females in the program, which there were and so yeah, made a lot of friends.”
Christopher Pucci
Christopher Pucci, 23, comes from Ontario as well.
“I’m originally from a little small suburb called Barrhaven outside of Ottawa,” he said. He did his pre-service at Algonquin College.
He was a construction framer for three years while trying to get a job as a firefighter, he explained.
“I had a lot of that hands-on knowledge of the building, construction side of things with firefighting.”
“My grandfather was a firefighter from 1973 to 1980,” he said, explaining how his firefighting aspirations began. “He was somebody I really looked up to when I was a kid.”
With an active lifestyle of hiking and biking, he said “it was really right up my alley.” He was also a lifeguard at one point and found himself drawn into the medical side of things.
In highschool, he took an ERS course that “really introduced us to what it’s like to be a police officer, a paramedic and firefighter.”
After that he knew the track he wanted to be on.
Sun Peaks Fire Rescue’s Work Experience Program will end in October.
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