Advertisement 1
As Fry prepares to retire this month after 27 years in the fire service, she reflected in a wide-ranging interview on some of the challenges, accomplishments, and memories in an uncommon career
Article content
In the hot, dry summer of 2022, an evolving, dangerous situation in the middle of Karen Fry’s city was gnawing at her daily.
Article content
Dozens of tents and structures had been erected along East Hastings Street, with open flames, gas tanks, lithium batteries, and butane torches posing a serious risk of fire or explosions. At that time, Fry had been the chief of Vancouver Fire Rescue Services for a little over a year — and she believed City Hall wasn’t meeting the problem with the urgency it required.
Article content
Article content
Story continues below
Article content
Fry eventually got the action she wanted, but not without some frustration.
Article content
Sunrise
Article content
“Definitely, it felt like it wasn’t moving quick enough,” Fry said this week. “I put an order on something because something needs to change. If I didn’t think it needed to change, I wouldn’t put an order on it. I was definitely frustrated. … I don’t know if it just wasn’t a majority on council, or people who just were afraid to make the decisions and just taking too long.”
Article content
As Fry prepares to retire this month after 27 years in the fire service, including the last five as Vancouver’s chief and the first woman to hold that role in the department’s 135-year history, she reflected during a wide-ranging interview on some of the challenges, accomplishments, and memories from an uncommon career.
Article content
In her first year as chief, Fry had already issued orders related to long-term encampments in Strathcona and CRAB Park. But the camp on the Hastings sidewalk in July 2022 created an even more dangerous situation. An inspection found conditions that endangered life around the tent city, including the accumulation of combustible materials against buildings, blocking entrances, exits and the fire department’s water connections. At one point, as many as 300 people reportedly lived there.
Article content
Story continues below
Article content
On July 21, 2022, Fry issued a chief’s order directing City Hall to clear anything obstructing building exits, remove combustible materials, and dismantle tents and structures that could impede firefighting operations.
Article content
Article content
Read More
-
Vancouver hires Karen Fry as city’s next fire chief
-
‘Unsustainable’: Vancouver Fire and Rescue on DTES overwhelmed by call volume
-
Advertisement 1
Story continues below
Article content
The chief’s order directed City Hall to comply within six days.
Article content
Although city staff kept working on Hastings, the tents remained long after the deadline passed.
Article content
The prospect of dismantling tents that were, in many cases, people’s homes was challenging, emotionally charged, and “super-political,” Fry said. “But I just can’t imagine where we would be if we didn’t take that action. Nobody else was taking action. I didn’t feel like there was the political willpower, so I was using everything that I could under my authority. I thought if something happens and these buildings catch on fire and people die, I would feel somewhat responsible by not having done my legislative requirement.”
Article content
That October’s municipal election brought change to City Hall, with Ken Sim defeating incumbent mayor Kennedy Stewart, and Sim’s ABC Vancouver party winning majorities on council and park board. The new party soon signalled a different approach to encampments on public property.
Advertisement 1
Advertisement 2
Advertisement
Article content
On April 5, 2023, the City of Vancouver announced that, effective immediately, staff accompanied by police would begin clearing the roughly 80 tents remaining on Hastings. The move met significant controversy, including criticism from Stewart.
Article content
Fry still believes it was the right thing to do in the interest of public safety.
Article content
Fry recalls that around that time, Sim told her privately that he would “take the heat for it,” offering to stand publicly to explain the decision instead of forcing her as fire chief to be the face of removing the Hastings camp.
Article content
“You just needed someone to step up, and I think our mayor really did that,” Fry said. “It didn’t really feel like we may have had the political momentum to move things along until this new council got in.”
Article content
Fry has had an uncommon career trajectory.
Article content
It’s rare for someone to rise to the rank of chief in a big-city fire department without ever having worked as a firefighter. Fry started as a fire dispatcher in her hometown of Nanaimo in 1999. In her first year on the job, her marriage broke down. She was working a difficult new job as a single mother to four young children while going through a painful breakup, but, she said, her colleagues “wrapped their arms around me and supported me.”
Article content
Story continues below
Article content
Article content
“That really taught me about the fire department family,” Fry said. “It wasn’t just a job. … It’s something we tell our brand new firefighters: ‘You’re part of our family now.’”
Article content
She rose to the rank of captain at the Nanaimo Fire Department, before accepting a deputy chief job in Surrey in 2006, and then returning to Nanaimo where she was appointed chief in 2017. In November 2020, she was announced as Vancouver’s next chief.
Article content
Article content
Fry says the single biggest change to the fire service in the past 27 years was the arrival of powerful synthetic opioids. The ensuing spike in overdose calls and deaths has hammered firehalls around North America, and especially Vancouver.
Article content
“It’s affecting everything that we do in a fire department nowadays — and I don’t care what city or municipality you live in. It’s affecting everyone,” Fry said. It’s taking a mental and physical toll on firefighters, and has helped make Vancouver firehalls among the busiest in North America, especially Firehall No. 2 in the Downtown Eastside.
Article content
Fry saw sexism during her career, including an earlier manager who reprimanded her for acting “too feminine.” But, she points out, she also saw sexism when she worked as a supermarket cashier before becoming a fire dispatcher at age 32. She believes the fire service has made big improvements since. Female firefighters are still a minority, but there are roughly three times as many women working in Vancouver’s fire department today as there were in 2013.
Article content
Story continues below
Article content
Fry was well-liked by the department’s rank-and-file union members, said Katrina Davison, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters’ Vancouver local, who added that is not always the case with every chief. “That’s not always the rule, and more the exception.”
Article content
Article content
Under Fry’s leadership, “the relationship between the union and the city improved vastly over five years,” Davison said. In recent years, the firefighters’ union has celebrated some big wins, including council’s support for investing in firefighting outfits without carcinogenic chemicals, a move from 12-hour to 24-hour shifts that is said to improve workers’ mental health, and what Davison called one of Canada’s most robust cancer screening programs.
Article content
“We think she left things in a really good place,” Davison said of Fry. “We’re sad to see her go.”
Article content
In an emailed statement Tuesday, Sim thanked Fry, on behalf of council and all Vancouverites, for “her years of dedicated service,” and wished her “every happiness in retirement.”
Article content
“As Vancouver’s first female fire chief, she leaves a lasting legacy of dedicated public service, having led one of Canada’s busiest fire departments through some of the most challenging periods in our city’s history,” Sim said.
Story continues below
Article content
Fry’s last full day as chief was last Sunday. Trevor Connelly, a deputy chief under Fry, has taken over as interim fire chief, while the city recruits for a permanent replacement.
Article content
Fry is returning to Vancouver Island, where she owns a property in Ladysmith. After being on-call, in some capacity, almost every day for a quarter-century, she looks forward to unplugging, playing with her dogs, feeding her chickens, hiking, and travelling. But she expects it will be a difficult transition in some ways.
Article content
“A lot of firefighters find it hard when they retire from the service, because it’s so much of their identity,” Fry said.
Article content
“It’s never been just a job. It’s always been more to me.”
Article content
Article content
Article content
