Stacey named fire chief

When the chair of the Kahnawake Fire Brigade executive committee showed up at the Kahnawake Fire Brigade with an envelope recently and passed it wordlessly across a table, interim fire chief Wihse Stacey wasn’t sure what to expect.

Stacey had been leading the fire department for about a year following the departure of David Scott, who ran the shop for almost two decades. That didn’t mean the top job wasn’t a competitive process, however, and Stacey was taking nothing for granted.

There was, it turned out, no need for nerves: Stacey, who started at the department in January 2000 - the brigade’s first member of the new millennium - had officially become Kahnawake’s fire chief.

“Honestly, it doesn’t feel like it’s really sunken in yet,” Stacey said. “Some days I’m going home and I’m thinking to myself, ‘Am I really the chief? Is this really what’s happening?’”

A quarter century after starting out, Stacey is now responsible for steering the department he loves, one of Kahnawake’s most critical institutions.

He’s come a long way from when he started out, just looking to tag along and make himself useful.

“I was that little grunt, that little dog that jumps up and down and wants to be involved in everything,” Stacey said. “I used to show up to calls even before I was a member. I wanted to see what was going on. I kind of liked it, the friendship, the camaraderie that comes with it, and I enjoyed it.”

It makes sense for a tactile guy like Stacey - who likes to get his hands dirty, to be in the middle of things - to have been drawn to the siren as fire trucks peeled out of the station. Yet, as he takes control of the department, he has to reconcile with the constraints of a more administrative role than he had as a firefighter.

“I’m about as far away from that now as can get,” he said. “My job on a fire scene is to coordinate and control, so I’m developing plans, strategies, tactics on how we’re going to address whatever the situation may be, whether it’s a house fire, a car fire, tractor trailer, anything like that.”

The hands-on member of the department was able to put these doubts aside, however. Easing his concerns? The opportunity to enact his vision for the department, one that he sees as the next step in a relay.

“Every fire chief has enough foresight to say we need to grow,” Stacey said.

Growth is key to his plans, and not for nothing. The department, he believes, needs to mirror the growth of Kahnawake, which is building further out and in greater density, responding to a climbing population and a housing shortage.

“The community’s growing. I’d like to push the department to manage what the risks are,” he said.

As Kahnawake builds bigger, the department’s approach needs to evolve and shift, he said. Different resources are needed.

“Dealing with high-rise structures, with multi-dwelling apartment buildings, 10-15 apartments per structure, can be very scary. You’re not talking about one family’s household now. You’re talking about 15-20 potentially,” he said.

“There’s nothing to say we can’t fight these fires. It just involves a very different type of strategy.”

Other members of the KFB believe the department is in good hands with Stacey at the helm.

“With Wihse, I think he’s pushing us to become a little bit more than what we are now, which I think is very impressive,” said Heather McGregor, a paramedic and firefighter with the KFB.

“He’s been doing it almost for a year now, and now it’s official. It’s very satisfying to see him in that role knowing all the hard work that he put in.”

Indeed, part of Stacey’s qualifications for the job stem from his decision to go back to school. While he originally took a few courses at local universities, he ultimately settled on earning a fire officer certificate from the Justice Institute of British Columbia, enrolling shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic settled in.

“That really spoke to a lot of his determination and strong dedication to the department and to the community,” said Tanner Phillips, paramedic supervisor at KFB.

“I always kind of saw that, him eventually becoming the fire chief.”

Working closely together for several years, Phillips and Stacey struck up a friendship, and Phillips believes it is a combination of Stacey’s personal and professional qualities that make him so well suited to leading the department.

“He can be that authority figure, but he can also be somebody you can talk to, someone you can count on,” Phillips said. “We need someone to have our back on a fire scene, someone to have our back on an ambulance call, but we also need someone to have our back on administrative things and someone that’s going to be our voice.”

Stacey is always ready with a joke, Phillips said, and that sense of humour does more than help keep up morale when times get tough. It also creates space to talk about deeper subjects.

He’s also kind, Phillips said. This shines through in Stacey’s impulse to highlight the contributions of the fire brigade’s membership.

To Stacey, the Kahnawake Fire Brigade is leading the way and setting an example for other communities and brigades of what a local First Nations fire department can be.

That’s for many reasons, from the fire chiefs who came before him - Stacey spoke with great admiration of David Scott’s commanding presence on a fire scene - to the department’s volunteers, some of whom have been involved for decades.

“I’m at the top of the hierarchy, but I’m only one person. Without the volunteers, if they’re not here, we’re nothing,” Stacey said. “Having the dedication and the commitment that they give? Being a volunteer is not a simple job. You figure you volunteer when you want, but how many times have you scheduled a fire? Have you scheduled an ambulance call? It doesn’t work that way.”

Dedication is part of the sentiment Stacey wants to help carry forward.

“I wear my uniform with pride,” said Stacey. “I try to represent this department, this community at a higher level. I’m sure a lot of the members will say the exact same thing. For the longest time, Kahnawake has been the tip of the sword.”

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Marcus Bankuti, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter