| In the late 1990s, Halifax Regional Fire & Emergency Service decided to jump on the human rights and employment equity bandwagon and brought in an outside educator to bring everyone up to speed. Everyone except the women, that is.
According to Nadya-Lyse Paré, one of only two female firefighters at the time, her boss told her, “We were women, so we didn’t need to go because we were born diverse.” So everything Paré learned about those classes was second-hand.
“All that I knew was that usually it was worse after. There would be a backlash,” she said, adding “We even had some instructors walk out halfway through. They quit. They couldn’t handle the firefighters.”
 It took a new fire chief and a climate survey to turn things around. Paré was invited to sit on a committee that dealt primarily with issues around lack of communication in the department or complete disrespect on the job.
Paré and fellow firefighter Kevin Reade thought, “What if firefighters taught firefighters diversity since the issue seems to be that (the outside instructors) who came in didn’t seem to understand our culture.”
The idea took off, thanks an employee with the Halifax Regional Municipality who got the fire chief’s ear and suggested Paré and Reade go down to Washington the following week for a diversity course.
“We had no time to think about it or anything. We had to give him a decision that day and see if we wanted to tackle this and take it on,” Paré says. “The next week we were on a plane to Washington.”
Over the next three years, Reade and Paré immersed themselves in diversity training while at the same time working as firefighters, raising families and dealing with everything else life threw at them.
When the training was completed and it was time to take over instruction of her fellow firefighters, Paré admitted she was “absolutely terrified” because everyone before her had either failed or quit. Her fears were short-lived after the first class. Participants loved it because she and Reade were told they were “keeping it real”, a reality that sprang from confronting their own biases and prejudices.
“We really broke ground when we became educators,” Paré says. “Firefighters that were educating firefighters: that was a brand new thing. Even now there’s not much of that going on.” But word of their ‘keeping it real’ approach got around and other fire departments and fire schools started to approach her and Reade to do training. So much so, in fact, the fire chief suggested they form their own company.
Paré has witnessed a “huge, huge, huge difference” at the Halifax fire department. Its diversity course is now a pre-employment requirement. “As a teacher, I’ve seen a lot of changes. I’ve seen it shift from a spirit of resistance before to now. There’s so much more openness and trust in the classes,” she explains. “I mean there’s still a long way to go. At least now minds are open.”
Today Paré is a lieutenant in the fire department, as well as its equity and diversity officer, and last year she became the first female in the department’s history to be promoted to the rank of career operational officer. She has seen the number of women within Halifax Fire & Emergency Service increase sevenfold over the last 15 years.
“My greatest personal challenge was to accept that I was never going to be one of the guys and that whether I wanted the pioneer title or not, I was,” she says. “I’d like to see the day when the hiring and promotion of a minority is nothing special. It’s not celebrated any more or any less than a white man’s achievement.” |
