Broad-sweeping institutional change punctuated the 45-year career of recently retired city Fire and Paramedic Services Chief Joseph Nicholls.
Between adjusting services to the amalgamation which created the City of Greater Sudbury, a massive overhaul of firefighter training requirements and the city’s $164.6-million emergency services revitalization plan, there’s been a great deal of change for city staff to navigate.
This work is far from done.
Although Nicholls has been a common denominator through it all, he was quick to clarify that although he has been in various leadership roles, a lot of hard-working people backed him up.
“I may be the face to a lot of it, but there’s nothing short of a lot of people in the background I have the utmost respect for who are making changes and doing all the heavy lifting,” he said, later punctuating this thought with, “It’s the people.”
Nicholls’ final day with the city was on Friday.
Sudbury.com met with the freshly retired emergency response leader at the downtown emergency services hall earlier this week to reflect on his 45-year career.
He managed to close this career with a high point last week by earning a prestigious Richard J. Armstrong Leadership Award, which was given to Nicholls during last week’s Ontario Association of Paramedic Chief gala in London.
“To get an award with his name on it is certainly one of the honours of my career,” Nicholls said, adding that he worked with Armstrong on the Ontario Association of Paramedic Services, during which Armstrong’s leadership skills earned his respect.
The award, he said, is “certainly a nice way to cap things off.”
When it comes to leadership, Nicholls said his biggest message is to listen to people.
“You can’t always give them what they want when they want it, but listen and make sure that what you’re doing is leading to a goal of protecting them,” he said. “You’re there to support.”
Nicholls’ career in emergency services started in Blind River in 1980, and he remained employed in ambulance, safety and first aid throughout much of the decade, during which he also shifted from Blind River to Elliot Lake. He moved on to Massey in 1995 and Sudbury in 2000.
In Sudbury, he joined a team of four people working to bring paramedic services in-house to accompany the amalgamation of municipalities which created the City of Greater Sudbury.
“We redesigned the entire ambulance system,” he said.
Nicholls took on various leadership roles in the years that followed, ending his career as general manager of Community Safety and Fire and Paramedic Service chief, which he had maintained since 2017.
After 45 years, he reflected on his career this week as something to be proud of, with city fire and paramedic services left with a strong foundation and skilled leaders in place.
“I always liked aspiring to be in a leadership role, because that gave me the best opportunity to impact the best outcomes and the best opportunities for those people who were operating under me,” Nicholls said. “As a leader, it’s our job to make sure they have the best tools and training to do that job. … It’s influencing change.”
Change doesn’t come easy, he later added, particularly in a field as highly regimented as emergency services.
“When you start shaking things up and making changes it suddenly gets people amped up,” he said, which happened at numerous points throughout his career.
Not only was amalgamation tough to navigate, but its impacts are still being felt today, he said, pointing to the city’s ongoing emergency services revitalization plan, which is combining some emergency services stations and renovating others.
During amalgamation, Nicholls said, the city “took seven fire services, put them together, changed the logos in the trucks and then did nothing else until 2016 or 2017 when we started making some moves.”
The prospect of closing some stations is a politically tough move which Nicholls said took a lot of work to accomplish and resulted in a great deal of political and community pushback. In recent years, this was most publicly seen in Beaver Lake and Skead, whose emergency services stations were slated for closure (Beaver Lake has since closed).
Although Nicholls said some people still don’t like it, in the end, “You need to be brave, and this is the right thing to do.”
Another major hurdle has been provincial government-mandated increases in firefighter training requirements to whatever service level municipal councils determine is needed in their communities. In Greater Sudbury, this bumped volunteer firefighters’ 40 hours of initial mandatory training to 280 hours.
Although a hurdle, Nicholls clarified that paramedics went through a similar training burden spike in past decades, and that it’s a net win to both first-responders and the general public.
“In the long run, it’s going to make the fire service stronger,” he said. “You’re going to know that the people coming to help you have a minimal level of training.”
Through these efforts, Nicholls said the city will be providing emergency responders “with the best tools, the best training and the best facilities to support them in their life-saving mission.”
This, he said, “is a legacy that we can all be proud of.”
Other highlights in Nicholls’ career include his role in introducing the community paramedicine program to Greater Sudbury, wherein paramedics travel through the community to check in on at-risk residents, navigating the COVID-19 pandemic (as a result, Nicholls said the community has become better-prepared for future emergencies) and adding a peer support network and facility dog to provide mental health resources and support for first responders.
Newly retired, Nicholls said he plans on sticking around in Greater Sudbury with his wife, Mary Ann, minus whatever road trips they decide to take in a camper trailer. Nicholls said he’s been so busy for so long he hasn’t had time to travel, and has also accrued a backlog of home renovations he’s eager to finally tackle.
“Every day’s going to be Saturday, hopefully,” he said.
As part of a broader restructuring of city management positions, Nicholls’ dual fire/paramedic role is being replaced by separate chiefs for both.
Under this new configuration, Rob Grimwood of Mississauga has been appointed chief of Fire Services, and longtime city employee Aaron Archibald was appointed chief of Paramedic Services.