14 Lethbridge Fire and Emergency Services recruits go from graduation straight to work

LETHBRIDGE, Alta. -

Lethbridge Fire and Emergency Services gained 14 new members on Friday who graduated from the 2023 recruit class.

“It’s a lot of relief,” said recruit Joland Schmidt. “There's been a lot of anticipation going through the fire training as well as during it – waiting to be done and deployable in the role as a firefighter/paramedic.”      

Family, friends, members of the fire department and dignitaries were in attendance for the ceremony on Friday.

“It's been a long time coming,” added fellow recruit Kevin Bergeron. “It's been a tone of work and it's humbling to be sitting next to these people that I was sitting with. It truly is an honour.”

The grads underwent 12 weeks of instruction and training in both the classroom and hands-on experience.

“They have to go through all their preparatory stuff so that they can be ready for what we call tower runs, which is the live fire events where they actually put in to play the techniques that they've learned, the strategies that they've developed, the tactics that they have to figure out in the moment to overcome all of the different challenges that they face as a firefighter,” said Jim Anderson, captain of the recruit academy.

The new firefighters join the service at a pivotal time, according to Anderson.

“We have a staffing crunch of sorts where we got a large demand for firefighters,” he said. “We're a growing department and we need the numbers and it's a great support for us.”

This year’s graduation featured two classes.

The fall class, which began in August, had nine recruits undergo 12 weeks of training, while an accelerated class took just over a month to complete with five recruits.

As part of the graduation, the classes chose Schmidt and Bergeron for the Kilkenny award, which honours the recruit who exemplifies what it most means to be a leader and team player.

As part of the graduation, the classes chose Schmidt and Bergeron for the Kilkenny award, which honours the recruit who exemplifies what it most means to be a leader and team player.

“I’m lucky enough to have a little bit of prior experience in fire coming to this training so it was a good experience for me to apply that and show my course mates some of the tricks of the trade you could say,” Schmidt said. “They responded to it well and we just got along so well and it means a tone to be selected for this award.”

As to when the new recruits begin their first shift?

“I’m on shift today,” Bergeron smiled. “I started at nine and end at nine.”

The other recruits will join Bergeron in the coming days.