Paul Bickford
Northern News Services
Monday, July 30, 2007

FORT SMITH - For many years, Ray Currie has been promoting safety in Fort Smith and elsewhere in the NWT.

Currie teaches such things as first aid and CPR.

For the retired teacher, it's a part-time job which he does under the name RDC Services, which stands for Ray and Donna Currie. Donna is his wife, who used to do the bookkeeping for the small business.

Ray Currie, of Fort Smith, teaches first aid and CPR. Currie demonstrates CPR by using two dolls - one of an adult and the other of a young child. Paul Bickford/NNSL photo

Currie has been teaching first aid and CPR - about 15 to 20 classes a year - for about 18 years.

"It's fun. It's something to do," he said. "The only time it ceases to be fun is if I have to do three or four courses in a row."

That's because he needs time to clean the dolls which he uses to teach CPR, he explained.

"Yes, I play with dolls," he joked.

Currie, 69, has offered training for various organizations in Fort Smith, and in communities such as Fort Simpson, Lutsel K'e, Fort Resolution and Hay River.

The first aid training deals with such situations as cuts, burns and hypothermia.

"First aid is mainly for trauma. It's not medicine. It's trauma," he said. "Anything that injures the body is trauma."

Currie, who also teaches the more advanced wilderness first aid, is certified to offer the training by St. John Ambulance

Studies have found that the number of injuries go down in workplaces that have first aid training, he said. "It's a heck of a lot easier not being hurt than being hurt."

Currie has also been re-supplying first aid kits mostly in Fort Smith for about 15 years, since he retired in the early 1990s after 22 years teaching at Joseph Burr Tyrrell School.

"I sell first aid kits and I will replenish first aid kits," he said.

For example, this year he replenished five first aid kits for the Fort Smith Rec Centre.

"I bring them home overnight, put them on top of the freezer and replace missing parts," he said, explaining the kits have basic supplies such as dressings, bandages and splints.

Currie said he charges only a very minimal fee for the service, plus the cost of supplies.

"I don't do it for the money," he said. "I do it for the first aid, just to keep first aid up. I don't call it work."

Every business and organization should have a first aid kit on hand, he added.

Currie was an Emergency Medical Technician in Fort Smith for 22 years, until he retired from that position three years ago.