{"id":35105,"date":"2024-09-26T17:47:59","date_gmt":"2024-09-26T21:47:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=35105"},"modified":"2024-10-03T17:28:33","modified_gmt":"2024-10-03T21:28:33","slug":"new-fire-chief-building-team-while-furthering-laings-legacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/new-fire-chief-building-team-while-furthering-laings-legacy\/","title":{"rendered":"New Fire Chief building team while furthering Laing\u2019s legacy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Central York Fire Services in in the midst of change, and newly-minted Chief Rocco Volpe is set to lead the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Volpe\u2019s appointment to the CYFS\u2019 top job was announced last week and the new Chief of the fire service serving Aurora and Newmarket has hit the ground running to build his team while looking for opportunities to further the legacy of the late Chief Ian Lang, who was less of a boss and more of a mentor to his successor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Laing died suddenly last November, it was the end of \u201cnine wonderful years\u201d of learning; but it was also a time of self-discovery as Volpe was tasked with filling the role as Acting Chief for 10 months \u201cto keep things on track\u201d while the Towns considered the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They found the perfect fit with the Acting Chief, who first took a leadership position 15 years ago within Whitchurch-Stouffville\u2019s fire department and, through their nine years working side-by-side, Volpe says he felt Laing was \u201cpreparing me for that next step.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Volpe didn\u2019t always aspire to a career in fire service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he was 18, he began getting his feet wet in law enforcement, but soon enough that gave way to a career in forestry \u2013 first with the then-City of Scarborough and this led him to a return to school with the goal of studying urban forestry. Here, he faced a number of challenges, including working to clean up the infamous 1998 Ice Storm that crystallized swaths of Ontario and Quebec.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI got deployed in the Great Ice Storm to assist with emergency services \u2013 fire and police \u2013 and we were assisting taking trees and frozen lines off people\u2019s houses in all that,\u201d he recalls. \u201cThen when I got to work in those communities, I was surrounded by a lot of firefighters, conversations happened, and [they] said, \u2018Rocco, you kind of have great skills for the fire services\u2019 and I asked questions about it, met a couple of people. After the ice storm, I circled back and asked them about the fire service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From there, he dedicated his time to night school to pursue this new career path \u2013 and his instructor found there were transferrable skills from his career in urban forestry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He started off as a recruit firefighter in Richmond Hill 26 years ago, where he learned this important role from the ground up. His superiors nudged him towards the training side of things and there he found a particular niche.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI went to school to learn about adult education and enhance those skills, and I taught for a good eight or nine years as a training officer and I taught a variety of training programs, recruits and all that. I think it goes back to the person that I am, being people-oriented, wanting to do good for the people in the community,\u201d says Volpe who, after going back to university to further his career as an instructor, found a permanent role in Stouffville.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s where I started making an impact in the community,\u201d says the Newmarket resident. \u201cAlthough it wasn\u2019t my community, it was the next best thing because I was just next door. Within 10 minutes, I was in Whitchurch-Stouffville and I got to make change there, where I served for five or six years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was also there where he met Laing and, as he tells it, \u201cI just followed him along.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere were a lot of lessons I learned in the nine years I spent with him, but one thing that sticks out to me is he always taught me to be on time,\u201d he says. \u201cOne of the things that Chief Laing was a stickler on was your work started at 8.30 and he expected you to be in your office and ready to go for 8.30. He always had expectations when meetings started at certain times that you were available in the seat, getting that meeting started, as he demonstrated it. Another thing he taught me about was dress attire and holding that professionalism. He was a big advocate for wearing a tie, a dress cap every morning. I would wear my dress cap every morning, my tie, and when I was with other fire departments we just never had that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOther things he taught me was to be fair, friendly to staff, but then he told me there was an element of the Fire Chief\u2019s position that you would have to be firm and that\u2019s the piece that Fire Chiefs tend to struggle a little bit with because the buck stops with the fire chief and there are those uncomfortable conversations you have with staff, or those matters that people don\u2019t really like to deal with, like discipline and absenteeism. It taught me to be fair, friendly and firm. When you\u2019ve spent nine years with someone, he taught me other pieces like the political acuity side of things.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chief Volpe describes himself as a \u201cperson who loves relationships and community.\u201d Friendships, he says, \u201coutlast the work\u201d and that is something he wants to underscore in his new role \u2013 both within the CYFS and as a community leader in Aurora and Newmarket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI would like to work with the team and generate different community events we can open our doors to and enhance the community involvement with us,\u201d he says, adding these efforts will build on their annual Open House, which was held this past Saturday, and their outreach to potential recruits through their Inspire events. \u201cThose are always the staples, but just looking to those community events, how could we integrate better into the community?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCYFS is just in the mix of creating a new leadership team. I am excited because we\u2019re going to be posting for two Deputy Fire Chiefs. I\u2019m excited to bring two people into those roles. We have fabulous people in the fire service and I will just want the ability to be a resource for them, a mentor, someone that they can have a conversation in the hopes that I can influence them, that perhaps they would like to take that next step from Deputy to Fire Chief and remove any barriers, any challenges they have, and do this together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI will be seeking for the highest educated, sought-out individuals out there and hopefully between the team we can have a fresh start and I can get their ideas in how we can make ourselves that much better and what kind of stamps we can put onto CYFS in furthering Chief Laing\u2019s legacy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Central York Fire Services in in the midst of change, and newly-minted Chief Rocco Volpe is set to lead the way. Volpe\u2019s appointment to the CYFS\u2019 top job was announced last week and the new Chief of the fire service serving Aurora and Newmarket has hit the ground running to build his team while […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_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}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-98d","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-14 09:06:57","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35105","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=35105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35105\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}