Remebrance Day-Part 1

Sgt. Maxine McKellar retired after a 25 year career in Air Force.

     Remembrance Day is always a challenge to cover for the newspaper. The solemn act of remembrance does not pair well with the activity of trying to be everywhere and photograph everything at once. But proper coverage both in story and picture are integral parts of the day. If no record exists how can we remember as memories fade and veterans pass?

     The act of remembrance isn't passive and it isn't meant to last just the one day.

The Act of Remembrance

"They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
We will remember them."

     It may have been because I haven't covered a Remembrance Day Ceremony in a while but I was acutely aware that people may have been viewing my work to record the story of Remembrance as more of a distraction from the act then as an means to honour it.

     It wasn't until after the ceremony that I realized that people do understand the importance of recording the ceremony.

     I was thanked by so many people for my preview coverage of Remembrance Day that I started to feel uncomfortable. I am not a veteran. I have done nothing worthy of thanks on this day. I was thanked by veterans people I should be thanking, and did.

     The final affirmation came when I sat down for coffee with a veteran from England, David Hale. This senior gentleman who spent 18 years in the SAS was delighted to see my pictures of him and was unable to contain his excitement at being able to share our ceremony with his buddies in the legion back home.

     In pictures, "They shall not grow old".

     We will remember them.

Retired Cpl. David Hale. He served 18 years with the 22 SAS Regiment

Works Cited

"The Act of Remembrance" The Royal Canadian Legion, 2016, http://www.legion.ca/honour-remember/remembrance-day-ceremony/ Accessed Nov. 2016

Reboot. Or Déjà vu again

     I am restarting this blog once again. If you look just a few inches down you will see another post that states I am going to school and will be posting about that.

     It didn't happen, the EMT program did not inspire me to write and that career did not take off. If I wanted to stay in the medical field, nursing or lab tech are fields I could likely succeed in. EMS is not the fit for me.

     My period of unemployment and rediscovery has inspired me to write. That same inspiration to write fiction, write essays, write opinions has also inspired me to get back into journalism as a route into PR and communications.

     I am back in school again, working to finish my degree. Between reporting and school I can't commit to regular posts but as I am inspired, my writing will appear here.

    Thanks for reading,

Jeremy

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I have never been very good at updating this blog regularly. Hopefully that will change as I start my new career in EMS. Currently I am applying to EMT schools and plan to reboot this blog once I start classes to document the learning process.

Stay tuned...

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RMES Ride along

After seven years as a photojournalist and dozens of emergency calls I have never travelled to a scene with lights and sirens.

Until April 6 that is.

I was in the Chief’s office at the Redwood Meadows Emergency Services  (RMES) station to interview Rob Evans about his promotion to Fire Chief.

About five minutes into the interview Evans paused, said they had a call and left to see what it was.
They had received a call for a car fire on a service road in Kananaskis Country.

When I stepped out of the office to see what was happening, Evans asked if I had my camera gear and if I wanted to ride with him in the departments’ rapid response pick-up truck.

I, of course, said yes, went back into the office to grab my camera and while being careful to stay out of the way of the engine crew, go into the rapid.

The drive from the hall was fascinating, the first thing I noticed was that the sirens, which I’ve heard from the outside and are quite loud, are much quieter when heard from inside.

I was also stunned, more than I probably should have been, out how other drivers on the road reacted as we drove down Highway 22.

When I drive myself to the scene of and accident or fire, I have a general idea of where all of the responding police and fire units are thanks to my radio scanner.

If I am ahead of any emergency vehicles I frequently check my mirrors and makes sure to pull off the road and be out of the way well before they reach me.

Even without the advantage of knowing that they’re coming there’s no excuse not to get out of the way of emergency vehicles.

On this call, two pick up trucks continued driving, blocking the way, oblivious to us for some time as Evans honked the horn and worked to safely pass them.

I was told that this is actually about average but it does get worse on weekends as more people come out into the country.

We arrived on the scene moments after the engine did while that crew was still unrolling hose lines and getting their breathing masks on.

Evans said that everything went well at that scene. The proper strategy was with a combination of water and dry chemical extinguisher used to put out the fire.

With the fire out, they cleaned up their gear, turned the scene over to the Kananaskis Fire Investigator and returned to the hall where I was able to finish my interview with Evans about his promotion.

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First on the scene - a river rescue

It's actually been a long time since I've arrived first on the scene. With most of the hard news happening outside of the town limits it's pretty tough to beat vehicles that don't have to follow posted speed limits, red lights and the rest of the rules of the road like I have to.

On this river rescue I arrived first by about a minute or two. I was followed closely by Cochrane Fire Services Capt. Huw Jeffries in their ERU (its a pickup truck, I'm not sure what the designation means). He drove right onto the bridge to asses the situation. The Engine was off responding to what turned out to be a false alarm fire.

Moments later, two ambulances arrived and their crews started asking me  what was happening, which unfortunately I didn't know much since I had just arrived and only knew what had been transmitted over the radio (I did tell them what I'd heard the police say since I have no idea if ambulance crews monitor RCMP radio traffic).

Shortly after that the crews who had been paged into the fire hall for this call started to arrive with the necessary equipment to effect the rescue.

From there things progressed quickly, safety ropes were tied, water rescue team members got in position to back up the high angle rescue, and a firefighter climbed over the edge to effect the rescue.

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Rescue Animals

Although it is said that "patience is a virtue" its not one of my stronger virtues which is why I'm not much of a wildlife photographer. I'm just not good at sitting and waiting for wildlife.

I do however like pictures of wildlife. Which is why I quite enjoyed going to the Cochrane Ecological Institute where I was able to cheat and get great wildlife shots without much waiting. Since the lynx and owls and deer were in their cages it was pretty easy to get these photos.

It was especially nice to get the shots of the Lynx. After I finished photographing volunteer Konny Trosien and the baby deer (above), Lindsay, the reporter with Cochrane Eagle who was writing the story asked if we could get pictures of the Lynx. We were told that they are pretty reclusive but we could go up to the viewing tower and see.

Just as we turned to go one of the two lynx walked past the window right in front of me, it seems that the lynx was feeling contrary that day it was called reclusive so to prove the staff wrong it made an appearance and then to test my patience it paced so I could see it through the thick trees but not get a good shot for most of the time we watched it. Fortunately I managed this one good shot.

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Fire in Bragg Creek

The whole point of my moving to Cochrane was so that I would stop missing hard news because I was out of scanner range in Calgary. I still nearly missed the biggest hard news since my move because I was in Calgary. Fortunately a friend and photographer at the Rocky View Weekly texted to let me know about the fire in Bragg Creek.


The Husky Station, caught fire and was destroyed the evening of Jan. 30 (read the Cochrane Eagle story here.)


As it turned out I was able to get some great photos but as I write this listening to the RCMP planning their coffee break at Tim Hortons I can't help but wonder why can't news happen on nights like this??

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