SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
John Fredericks projected an upbeat, positive tone as he laid out what brought him North late last year to take over as the city's fire chief.

John Fredericks, who started as the city's fire chief Dec. 5, speaks to reporters at city hall on Dec. 16. - Shane Magee/NNSL photo

"I'm a visionary. I like to plan for the future," Fredericks told reporters Dec. 16 in a city hall meeting room after starting the job on Dec. 5. "I know we have challenges here. But those challenges are no different than any other fire department in Canada. My challenge is to get it right."

He enters a department in transition. Darcy Hernblad, chief for six years, retired last fall around the same time a deputy fire chief left.

This year, the ranks of full-time firefighters will grow from 24 to 28 and the number of emergency dispatchers will increase from five to seven.

The city is also about to start negotiations for a new collective agreement with its unionized firefighters, represented by the International Association of Firefighters Local 2890.

Other changes may be coming. Council has requested a plan in the next five months to implement up to 30 recommendations stemming from a recently completed consultant report by Behr Energy Services Ltd. The report, which examines the fire division, points to issues that include high turnover and staff burnout. Yellowknife's fire division had a budget of $4.7 million last year.

Fredericks was still getting to know the ins and outs of the department when he spoke with Yellowknifer in mid-December.

"I've reviewed the master plan a bit to try and get a vision of where I see the fire division going," he said of the Behr report.

Fredericks started his 25-year career in the fire service in his home province of Nova Scotia before serving as assistant fire marshal for the Baffin Island region of Nunavut. He returned to Nova Scotia for a period before going to southern Alberta. In both locations he worked on projects regionalizing multiple fire departments, getting them to work together instead of as silos.

He comes to Yellowknife after three years as fire chief in Kirkland Lake, a rural community of 8,400 in northeastern Ontario.

While working in Nunavut, he had travelled through Yellowknife several times and said he enjoyed the city.

"The fire service has a great tradition here. Everything I was hearing about the city was positive so it gave me the opportunity to come here and hopefully finish out my career here," the 57-year-old said.

Yellowknife has a larger number of calls for service than the other departments he's worked for, another reason Fredericks said he wanted to work here.

"I've never been in a real busy-busy department from that aspect," he said. "I've always been dealing with, 'What can I do to keep people motivated - to keep them busy.' So this is a little different."

In 2016, the department had 4,605 calls, according to the firefighters union. That's up 40 per cent from three years ago. A majority of calls, around 80 per cent, were for medical services. Is he worried about the larger call volume?

"No. That's no issue," he said.

In part because of the growing number of calls, council approved hiring four more firefighters starting in July to address under-staffing, one of the recommendations of the Behr report.

The report also attributed high turnover in the ranks of the part-time, or paid on-call, firefighters to high demands required for training and emergency responses while maintaining full-time jobs, family and personal responsibilities.

There are supposed to be 15 paid on-call members who can be called in to help when full-time members are busy with calls.

In the last nine years, the Behr report states 40 paid on-call members have left.

The city also needs to replace deputy fire chief Mike Hoffman who left this fall after four years with the service.

The city expects to fill the position "in the near future" once a candidate has been found, stated Dennis Marchiori, the city's director of public safety, in an e-mail.