{"id":11778,"date":"2015-09-02T14:47:21","date_gmt":"2015-09-02T18:47:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=11778"},"modified":"2015-09-09T07:58:44","modified_gmt":"2015-09-09T11:58:44","slug":"cyfs-deputy-chief-hangs-up-hat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/cyfs-deputy-chief-hangs-up-hat\/","title":{"rendered":"CYFS Deputy Chief hangs up hat"},"content":{"rendered":"

Deputy Chief Paul Leslie was the point man for the Central York Fire Services during and following the 2014 fire which destroyed Aurora United Church. Auroran photo by Brock Weir<\/em><\/p>\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

After 35 years as a firefighter, Paul Leslie, Deputy Chief of the Central York Fire Services (CYFS), has officially hung up his hat.
\nLeslie\u2019s final day on the job was Friday, after nearly nine years with the CYFS. <\/p>\n

\u201cTiming and opportunity\u201d have been the hallmarks of his career, he says, and when his 35th anniversary as a firefighter coincided with his 55th birthday, he figured it was the perfect time to pursue other opportunities.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have some new efforts I want to undertake with my family and a couple of other things I would like to pursue that I just haven\u2019t had the time to get involved in so far,\u201d he says. \u201cEducation is one. I have a penchant for instruction, so I am looking at teaching opportunities. I would love to get involved in some more civil service areas like human rights issues and prevention efforts for violence against women.\u201d<\/p>\n

If \u201ctiming and opportunity\u201d have been a hallmark of his career, so too have the education and prevention components.<\/p>\n

Leslie says he was never one of those guys who wanted to be a firefighter growing up, but when he was a young man, \u201cjust at loose ends\u201d and sharing an apartment with his brother, a job posting came up for the Toronto Fire Service. It had the makings of an excellent career, he thought, and ultimately had the good fortune to be hired. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the view this was a very honourable thing to be doing and this was a fulfilling career,\u201d he says. \u201cThe privilege of being able to work in a profession that benefits your community, where you\u2019re not having to worry about profit-driven efforts, you\u2019re able to look at what is best for the people in your community. That is a pretty privileged position to be in and I realised pretty early on I was a pretty lucky guy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beginning his career in Toronto, many of his duties fell under the umbrella of fire prevention, performing inspections with staff, keeping an eye on the city\u2019s larger construction projects and ensuring they were being built safely, were often the orders of the day. High rise fires, at the time, were quite prevalent in the 1980s which spurred a close examination on just how fires were being fought. <\/p>\n

After working with the Toronto Department on how to address that issue, he spent the next 17 years working at the Ontario Fire Marshall\u2019s Office, working on a number of investigations, as well as looking at how to encourage some behavioural changes across the province.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did a lot of work with\u2026some changes in how to approach both code enforcement and public attitudes towards fires, not accepting poor behaviour of people not having working smoke alarms, endangering their children by not having working smoke alarms,\u201d reflects Leslie. \u201cThe fire service, up until the last 10 or 15 years, has been quite tolerant of that and I was involved with a number of people who were pushing to change that and make it so it was not a socially acceptable thing to not have working smoke alarms needlessly cause a fire and endanger or kill your family or children. <\/p>\n

\u201cComing to the CYFS, there was a huge opportunity with this department as it has continued to grow to help us focus on our growth and ensure our fire fighters are given the training and he support to do the exemplary job they do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moving from the Fire Marshall\u2019s Office to the CYFS was a more hands-on experience, and that was part of the appeal. It was rewarding, he said, to make things happen at a local level and to flex some muscle in a new position. <\/p>\n

\u201cTo be a good deputy chief, you need to be able to lead people and that is an individual and personal challenge to ensure that you\u2019re bringing the right approach to the job to encourage your staff, to motivate your staff, to support your staff and ensure they are having a rewarding and challenging career,\u201d he says. \u201cIt is a very fulfilling challenge but it is a constant challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Deputy Chief Paul Leslie leaves the force after a 35 year career focused on fire education and prevention. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":11765,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-33Y","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-02 05:21:54","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/2015-09-03-04.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}