I was a firefighter in WEP 8 at the Big White fire Department. Before being accepted into this program, I had just graduated from the Justice Institute’s pre-employment program 5 months before. Even after school was done I still felt I had a lot to learn. That’s why I applied to the Work Experience Program. Upon being accepted I didn’t know exactly what to expect besides learning more about firefighting and maybe actually get to go on some real calls. We started our program on July 6th 2009, that’s when everyone got introduced and gave a little story of who we were and where we come from. During the summer we had an intense training schedule to get us up to par with the department standards. The Chiefs always made sure we were learning something new every day, if it wasn’t Driver Training then it would be First Responder or Rapid Intervention Team. We definitely got our fair share of certificates throughout this program. As time went on the season started to open up and more and more calls started to roll in. When the season opened we automatically started seeing improvements in our radio communications, our First Responder skills and our general firefighting knowledge. Towards the end of the program a lot of us were starting to get interviews in different departments all over the country. Our certificates have basically doubled, my volunteer experience has tripled and we got some real world career experience by doing a 24 hour ride along with the city of Trail. Not only did it give us an amazing resume but it also gave us a great experience living in a world class ski resort for 10 months.
