About a month ago, I interviewed Randy Neily. I was working on a documentary for the CBC Radio One show
Maritime Magazine. The piece was called "Where There's Smoke, Will There Be Firefighters?" and you can
listen to it here.
Randy was the deputy fire chief in Blandford, whose volunteer fire department the documentary profiled. A few weeks later, Randy passed away (there's a Facebook group celebrating his life
here).
On the night I was at the Blandford fire station recording a lot of my material I wanted to speak to Randy, but something about him intimidated me. He was physically large, and didn't do a lot of the social niceties with me. We were introduced, and he went back to his business without showing much interest. I approached fire chief Philip Publicover and said I'd like to interview Randy but was feeling a bit intimidated. Did he think Randy would be amenable?
Philip laughed, said Randy might seem intimidating but wasn't. On the other hand, he didn't know how much he'd be willing to talk. Later, I approached Randy, and after some initial hesitation he agreed to be interviewed.
We sat in the fire station office, Randy under a poster for the movie
Backdraft, and talked for half an hour. A couple of times we'd seem to be done and I'd turn off the recorder, but then the conversation would carry on and I'd start recording again.
In the end, I didn't wind up using any of those interviews (although if you listen really, really closely you can hear Randy laughing in the background at one point). There just wasn't room. But I learned a lot, and it was helpful.
Randy was a volunteer firefighter, paramedic and former firefighter instructor. He visited every single fire station in Nova Scotia (there are over 300 of them) and had taken photos at each place. I suggested it might make a good book -- and he said he had thought about that. I hope that archive of photos winds up somewhere where they'll be appreciated.
Here's a short clip of Randy expressing his worry about the future of the fire service, and his photos.
Labels: CBC, Documentary, My work, Radio, Volunteer fire departments