Avery Dupuis is no stranger to the world of firefighters.
Her mother was a long-time Saanich Fire dispatcher who now works as FireSmart co-ordinator at the City of Langford. Her dad volunteered for the Sooke Fire Department.
“We would spend Easter at the fire hall,” said Dupuis, 18, who once had a firefighter-themed bouncy castle at one of her birthday parties when she was younger.
Dupuis had always thought about firefighting in the abstract, but a close call with a wildfire in 2021 made her realize it could be a career.
She was sitting outside a friend’s home in Kamloops that July when she heard a loud crack in the sky.
“A lightning strike hit the top of the mountain and the entire thing got engulfed in flames,” Dupuis said. “We had to evacuate and it was a very scary thing.”
Between April 1 and Sept. 30 of 2021, 1,610 wildfires charred 8,682 square kilometres of land in B.C., mainly in the southern and southeastern regions.
There were 181 evacuation orders and 304 evacuation alerts that year. At the height of the fires, the daily number of active blazes was more than 300.
The Fraser Canyon community of Lytton was consumed by fire on June 28.
A provincial state of emergency was declared on July 21 and wasn’t lifted until Sept. 14.
The devastating fire season — and her own evacuation — inspired Dupuis to want to become part of the B.C. Wildfire Service. “I want to be a person that’s able to help those families save their homes.”
The recent Belmont Secondary School graduate, who said she would be happy to be posted anywhere across the province, was one of 31 teenagers who attended an all-girls three-day summer firefighting camp in the capital region in July.
The teens — who hail from all across Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands — were hosted at University of Victoria dormitories and spent a July weekend at various fire and urban search-and-rescue sites in the capital region learning firefighting skills.
Participants learned how to render medical aid, use a personal harness to drag someone to safety, rappel off a tower and break open cars with extrication tools.
And then there was the self-contained breathing apparatus, or SCBA, drills, one of Dupuis’ favourite activities at the camp.
“We had to feel around, pretend that we were in a burning building and we had to fit the pack, as well as our helmets and all of our gear, through these tiny openings,” she said, adding that it was a “definitely sweaty” experience.
Another participant, Brooke Walker, said she joined the camp in memory of her late grandfather, who once worked as a Victoria Fire mechanic.
Brooke, who recently graduated from Stelly’s Secondary School, said she plans to study nursing in the fall, but could see herself becoming a volunteer firefighter in the future.
Dragging people around in simulated rescues was exciting, she said.
So was working the high-pressure fire hose, said Walker, miming the action.
“It was a lot higher pressure than I thought — it was a lot of weight.”
The camp — which included long, hot and tiring days— was the definition of “type two” fun, Walker said. “Like it sucks in the moment, but when you look back on it, it was like the best time you’ve ever had.”
Brooke was effusive in praising the women who volunteered to run the camp. “They were so helpful, so empowering. They’re like my mothers here,” she said with a laugh.
“You can go to them about anything but they’re also like the strongest people I know.”
As the teenagers packed up at the end of the day, some sported shirts bearing the names of their local fire departments — Oyster River, Pender Harbour and Central Saanich.
Debra Rogers, president of the Island Ignite Mentorship Society, which puts on the event, said fire departments, unions and municipalities come together to sponsor the $300 needed to send a Grade 11 or 12 student in their community to the camp, which was held at the CFB Esquimalt Fire Hall, the No. 3 Fire Hall in the City of Victoria, and the Urban Search and Rescue facility in Esquimalt this year.
Grants, private donations and corporate sponsors cover the rest of the costs.
The camp, called Island Ignite, is meant to empower youth and to show that women have an equal place in traditionally male-dominated jobs, she said.
“The goal is to ultimately empower youth through firefighting, to give young women exposure to non-traditional work, and get them to test themselves,” she said. “We really try as much as possible to show them that there are women in all different places doing good, meaningful work.”
The camp also featured talks from female members of the B.C. Ambulance Service, a local hazmat unit, and police, she said, adding that women from fire departments all across the Island come to volunteer.
Out of all of the emergency-service providers, the fire service has the largest gender disparity, Rogers said.
A firefighter census conducted by the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs in 2022 estimated there are about 14,000 women firefighters, making up 11 per cent of the estimated 126,000 firefighters across Canada.
There are even fewer women in paid career firefighting positions — women are more likely to be in volunteer departments rather than career departments, the report said.
Rogers estimates the percentage of female career firefighters to be around four or five per cent.
In 2017, at the age of 47, Rogers became Campbell River’s first career female firefighter — after eight years working the dispatch lines.
“The union and the city supported me to get my training so that I could move to the truck at the first opening,” she said.
But when she was a teenager, she had never seen a female firefighter, and didn’t think it was an option, Rogers said.
“Even though I come from four generations in the fire service, it was never suggested to me or my sister that we would become firefighters,” she said, adding that her younger brother was encouraged to pursue the career and now works as a battalion fire chief at the City of Victoria.
These days, Rogers is busy building up a community of women in the fire service on Vancouver Island and cheering on the next generation of potential women firefighters.
Rogers, along with Jenny Reid, a career firefighter with Langford Fire Rescue, and Liz Johnston, a firefighter with Port Coquitlam Fire and Rescue, started Island Ignite Mentorship Society in 2022, modelled after a similar firefighting mentorship program that had run for more than a decade in Metro Vancouver.
Twenty-seven participants attended last year’s summer firefighting camp in Victoria, and this year’s camp received more applicants than spaces available, she said.
Rogers said they’ll have to look at ways to expand the program, which is run solely by volunteers.
She said it was amazing to see participants who started out as “kind of these shy kids that were feeling a little overwhelmed” grow in confidence
“They’re more collaborative,” she said. “They learn about just what it takes to be supportive of somebody and to help somebody overcome fear.”
The camp has also become a great way to meet like-minded people, she said. “You can make a lifetime friend in only three days.”
Some teenagers attending the camp are already junior firefighters with their local departments and are allowed to assist firefighters with certain outdoor fires, Rogers said.
The camp gives people an opportunity to find mentors that can prepare them for a future firefighting career, she said.
“This starts on the weekend, but it doesn’t end there,” she said. “We will have enduring connections with these young girls well into the future.”
