By Chad Ingram
Nelson Johnson has seen a lot of Canada but now is taking in the scenery of the Haliburton Highlands as the new chief of the Minden Hills fire department.
“I have done just about everything,” Johnson says, seated in the boardroom of the Minden Hills fire hall, of his 28 years in firefighting. He’s been an industrial firefighter, a wildfire firefighter, a municipal firefighter, and for seven years was an instructor at a firefighting school in Alberta.
Born in Fort St. John, B.C., Johnson has lived all over the country, but spent 31 years in Alberta. Before taking the job with Minden Hills, which he started in mid-January, Johnson was deputy chief of the fire department in Iqaluit, Nunavut.
“It’s just always been my passion,” he says of firefighting, explaining as a kid he’d watch shows about emergency responders, and also lived across the street from a fire hall in Toronto as a child. “I always watched them.”
Johnson says he enjoys the perennial challenge offered by work in the fire services.
“No job is ever the same,” he says. “You’ve got to have that situational awareness.”
“I was ready for a fire chief position,” Nelson, who after nearly 30 years is entering the final chapter of his career, says of the move to Minden Hills. He says he was also looking to work with a volunteer fire department.
“I’ve come here and met a wonderful group of volunteers,” Johnson says of the department’s members. “I look forward to many years of working with them.”
A press release issued by the Township of Minden Hills reads, “In his role as fire chief for Minden Hills, Nelson will be responsible for fire and emergency services, and will provide proactive leadership in policy development and implementation, fire prevention and suppression, financial administration, staff recruitment and training and other administrative requirements, relative to fire services and emergency management operations.”
Johnson replaces Mike Bekking, who’s been the township’s interim chief since former longtime fire chief Doug Schell resigned in the fall of 2017.
Link to original article on mindentimes.ca: From Iqaluit to Minden Hills