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House Hansard - 90

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 16, 2022 10:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 90 - Jun/16/22
Mr. John Brassard
My Uncle Pete, who inspired me to be a firefighter, recently developed throat cancer. He spent almost 35 years on the job with the City of Toronto. In 1985, I got a job with the City of York Fire Department as a dispatcher. I had radio experience and naturally fit in as a dispatcher, but it was not enough for me. I saw the guys and girls on the floor. I saw what they were doing, and I wanted to be a firefighter. In 1987, I applied to the Town of Markham Fire Department. It was the Town of Markham at the time. I got on the trucks. I actually became a firefighter. I could not believe it. I was 22 years old at the time, just turning 23. There I was, with five weeks of training, in the middle of January, training to be a full-time firefighter. It was never anything that I ever wanted to do. I had always wanted to be a radio broadcaster. The equipment they gave us at that time was unlike the equipment today. We had hip-wader boots, basically. We had long coats. There was never, ever any protection for the groin area. Everything could come up. We actually got red fireballs gloves. For those who are here today, they were effectively made of plastic. If anybody got into a fire, they would actually melt on their hands. The equipment is nothing like it was with bunker gear. Often there were times when we went to fires at that time and we would go back to the fire station and take a shower after a fire, and the whole basin of the shower would be black. The soot and the carbon that we took in would actually have been absorbed. Everybody thinks about the impact that inhalation has on a firefighter, but it is actually the absorption. We would be sweating. All of those materials that were burned, the carbon and the soot would actually go through our skin. We would go back and the whole basin of the shower would be black. Just imagine what that was doing to our bodies, how it was impacting our bodies. I can tell the House first-hand how it impacted many of my colleagues. There was a fire very early on in my career at Greenspoon, a demolition company on Woodbine Avenue. They would pack all of their materials and oils. I remember that day. I was not on the actual fire, but I did spend two or three days there. The first-in crews were talking about what they had seen. Literally, the flames were 100 feet in the air. It was black smoke. Just imagine oils burning. There was black smoke everywhere. It took literally three or four days to get that fire under control. Things were burning underneath. At the time, the breathing apparatus that we had was known as a 2APD. It was not a Scott system or a regulator system, like we have now. We would actually have a hose dangling to an exterior regulator. We would attach the hose to the regulator. That is how we breathed with compressed air on our back. Oftentimes, at that time, not knowing what we know now, and again, this was 30 to 40 years ago, we would take the hoses off. I spent two days there, and we would take the hoses off and let them dangle. All of that stuff we were breathing in, came in through the hose, which was a direct conduit to our lungs and to our bodies. Because of that fire, Larry Pilkey, Paul Donahoe, Harold Snowball, Lorne Martin, Doug Kerr, who recently passed away, and Jason Churchill passed away. There were six people from that fire who passed away, because of an occupational-related cancer. I remember Jason Churchill who died at 51 years of age. Nobody changed occupational health in this province of Ontario more than Jason Churchill did. This guy was a dogged advocate for health and safety for firefighters. I am sure his name lives on for many people in the fire service. I worked with Jason for a while. I remember sitting in the washroom of the station. He came in and he had this giant lump under his arm. He asked me, “What do you think of that?” I said, “You have to get that checked out. That's not good.” He was literally dead within a year. There is no question in my mind, no question in my colleagues' minds that it was as a result of that Greenspoon fire that Jason Churchill died. I think of others as well. Gord Hooper is struggling with cancer right now. Bruce Zimmerman, my former captain, has been dealing with stomach cancer. All of them were at that fire. I heard the hon. member for Kitchener Centre speak about the fire in Kitchener. I was at Ed Stahley's funeral. I know about that situation and how many of those Kitchener firefighters died. It is the same thing with the Plastimet fire in Hamilton. There are still firefighters today who are suffering from occupational illnesses as a result of those two fires, just like there are with the Greenspoon demolition fire. This does not affect just the firefighters who contract cancer and eventually die. It affects their friends and families who live with the loss all the time. I can think of Luanne Donahoe and Larry's wife who have had to move on. I can think of the families that have to deal with this cancer. It does not just affect them emotionally; it affects them financially. For their entire lives they will have to deal with the financial loss of losing one of their loved ones. I know there has been some discussion today about birth defects. I can tell members first-hand that for many of these firefighters and their families the greatest joy in the world is having a child, but many of the children suffer from birth defects as a result of what their parents contracted at these fires. I am really lucky. I will share personally that I have a urologist who, when I retired at age 51, after I was elected to this place, took a baseline measurement because he has seen too many firefighters come through his office who have suffered from occupational cancer, whether it is prostate cancer, bladder cancer or brain cancer. There are 12 cancers that are recognized in Ontario right now as an occupational illness, at least at last count. He has taken that baseline on me every year I go for a check-up because he wants to know, because of my occupation, whether I am going to contract cancer as a result of all of those years of taking in, not just by inhalation but also by absorption, many of those carcinogens that are being created as a result of the materials today. The equipment has improved; there is no question about it, but making sure that we are looking after our firefighters and their families becomes critical. With respect to that fire, the fire in Kitchener, as well as the one at Plastimet, we also have to think beyond firefighters, because there were police officers and EMS officers who were on the scenes who are suffering from those occupational illnesses as well. Let me clearly and unequivocally state that I stand here as a former firefighter who loved every minute of my job every single day. There was not a day that I did not want to go in there. Maybe I did not feel like it the day after Joe Carter hit the home run to win the World Series in 1993. I am thinking maybe I should not have been at work that day. This is an important piece of legislation not only for firefighters who have contracted cancer and passed on, but their families and friends as well.
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