There was something about commercial fishing that, after awhile, just didn’t sit right with Jeff Beckwith.
If he could, Jeff wanted to halt his direct correlation between killing and maintaining a livelihood as soon as possible while living in Pender Harbour and making regular trips to Prince Rupert to gather the fish.
“My job was basically killing for a living. I had to harvest in order to put food in my fridge and I didn’t like that tie directly, but I really liked the idea of helping people in my community and that’s where my volunteer time [as a firefighter] in Pender Harbour really started to nurture that,” said Beckwith.
Jeff Beckwith, born in Sherbrooke, Que. and now deputy fire chief of the Prince Rupert City Fire Rescue Department, found himself in an anglicized part of the largely francophone province as a toddler.
Later moving to Montreal, and then Ottawa, Jeff went to elementary and high school in the nation’s capital – at Hillcrest, still in operation since 1961 – and he loved it.
“Ottawa’s a great town. It’s so manicured and you had opportunities to go to Montreal (two hours away) or Toronto (four hours) ... I got a taste for the outdoors there. We used to do white-water canoeing and kayaking trips to Algonquin Park on four-day weekend trips,” he said.
Jeff didn’t always know he’d be in the fire-rescue emergency services industry. In fact, it was the pursuit of a much different kind of education that led him to the western part of Canada.
“I decided to take a year and do some travelling, so I went to Europe and I spent about eight months down in Australia living and working and when I came back from those trips, the one thing I realized was everybody asked me ‘What was Canada like?’ and I said ‘I could only tell you what it’s like east of Thunder Bay,’ and so I thought when I get home, I’d better see what the rest of my country is like,” said Jeff.
“I needed to define what Canada is for myself and be able to talk about it.”
Jeff worked for Grace Bros., an Australian department store chain and made enough dough to purchase a Suzuki Samurai to travel around the country with his then-girlfriend. The pair went to Adelaide, Darwin and everywhere in between. Jeff climbed Ayers Rock, sheered sheep, went white-water rafting, got his diving certification along the great barrier reef and skied on the Snowy Mountains.
Upon his arrival home, Jeff’s journeys led the Ottawa resident to Williston Lake and the Prince George area in the northern interior of B.C to plant trees. Later, Jeff salmon-farmed out of the Sunshine Coast after moving.
“We were actually raising a pretty good product. We were raising chinook and coho which were naturally west coast fish and we were also working with them to boost their immune system through vitamins and not the antibiotics or anything bad for them,” he said.
The company later made the switch to Atlantic salmon and that’s when Jeff moved over to the commercial fishing side of things.
Not seeing a future for himself in that industry, but taking in all that Prince Rupert had to offer while fishing there, Jeff decided to move to the city where he would plant roots with the city’s fire department as a part-time worker, filling in for employees who were sick or on leave.
He immediately loved the area.
“I like Rupert a lot. To me, it’s a blend of a big centre and a small town. If you live in a big city like Vancouver or Ottawa or Calgary, to me you can get that kind of centre anywhere. It doesn’t matter if it’s Sydney, Australia, or London or Paris or whatever; you get a big mix of a whole bunch of people who don’t say hi to you on the street. In Rupert, you’ve got your services, your entertainment value and you’ve got all those things but you’re not stuck in a city with 350,000 or one million people,” he said.
“I had a bit of foresight to go to the academy in Vermilion which is just east of Edmonton, so I went there and got my [fire-fighting] certification and that helped me get a full-time job here.”
A few years later, Jeff returned to Vermilion’s Lakeland College and checked off his bucket-list goal of obtaining his degree. It took the form of a Bachelor’s of Business and Emergency Services. It also meant a lot of late nights studying while balancing a fire-fighting job and raising a young family – Jeff and his wife, Sandy had just had their first baby, Maddie.
“Those kinds of challenges are tough on families and I think if I were to give a shout-out it would be to my wife for putting up with all of that,” said Jeff.
The Rupertite’s foresight paid immediate dividends when the deputy fire chief position became available soon after Jeff finished his degree and he knew an opportunity like this one only came once in a blue moon.
“No, no I didn’t [think I’d ever find myself where I am today so soon], but I also recognize that I put a lot of work towards that as well and you kind of get rewarded for hard work every once in awhile and it definitely worked out for me.”
In his role, Jeff has gotten to know the culture, adrenaline-rushed and compassionate side of the very unique job and said it’s a fine balance keeping your emotions in check and performing your job effectively.
“Working as a firefighter, the best way I can summarize it or even as deputy chief now, is anytime the horn goes in the hall, you leave with the same attitude and that’s that we’re going to help someone. We don’t know what we’re getting into until we’re there hands-on ... We always leave with the same goal when we’re putting our gear on and driving; it’s that ‘I’m going to go help someone in one of the lowest times in their life’ and I don’t think there’s a job that rewards any more than that,” he added.
“There’s definitely the dark side to fire-fighting or any emergency service – police or ambulance - and that’s when you deal with something really traumatic like loss of life. That’s the big one, right; you work really hard to save someone or to keep them alive and they pass in your hands ... It’s a real hard part of the job for everyone and you have to keep that in check or it’ll definitely wear someone down.”
Jeff commended the stellar work of fire-rescue chaplain Dave Stirling who helps the members cope with on-the-job trauma.
Recently, Jeff and Sandy have started Black Feather Fishing Charters, their own business that takes newcomers around local waters. While Jeff himself doesn’t have the time to lead the boats himself (he has two skippers that do that now), he enjoys being able to meet all kinds of people from all walks of life while doing it.
Jeff and Sandy have welcomed another into their family – their three-year-old, Carson, along with nine-year-old Maddie and they’re teaching the youngsters the traditions of both Jeff’s English-Scottish backgrounds and Sandy’s Tsimshian roots.
“[All of it] is so there’s an appreciation for who we are as a family,” he said.