Hi to all reading this,

This will serve as an introduction to who I am, or at least the bare facts about me.

I am around fifty four years old on the outside, (still eighteen on the inside). Living in Caledon, Ontario.

For a living I am a maintenance supervisor in the Chrysler Assembly plant,

I do this because they pay me to,

I fix the equipment that makes the cars when things go wrong,

If the equipment doesn’t get fixed the 300's Magnums & Chargers will not be built.

We can always build them tomorrow.

For my other job I am a Firefighter,

I do this job because I love it, and I am deeply honoured to be able to do it.

I help people put in danger and difficulty when things go wrong,

If they don't get helped and the situation fixed,

For those people there will not be a tomorrow.

There can be no comparison between the two jobs.

I consider myself lucky to have the best job in the world,

A grunt in the back of a red wagon.

I have been for the past four years a volunteer in the Caledon Fire and Rescue Service. My station, (307), is about two blocks from my house so I am usually on the first machine out.

We have a moderately busy station about the two hundred calls a year, ranging from the bull calls to good working fires.

I got into the fire service way of life very early, my Dad was a retained fireman in the Glamorgan Fire Brigade in Wales, I attended my first shout at the tender age of five. At the age of eleven I had the "rank" of station mascot. I started turning out to all the calls I could, very unofficially, but in those days you could get away with things like that.

At seventeen I joined the Glamorgan Fire Service Volunteer reserve, an outfit formed after the disbandment of the AFS. I quite happily stayed with them for three years until I left Wales for Canada.

I have found after an absence of thirty years that many things in the fire service have changed, some for the better, some for the worse.

But, I have also noticed that most things have not, the incredible bond of brotherhood, the thrill and fear each call elicits, the immense feeling of job satisfaction, these are still the same, no matter how long ago or how far away.

Bye for now.