Dedicated firefighter Charles McGregor aspires to be senior manager

May 19, 2020

Coping with rejection in pursuit of his dream of becoming a firefighter wasn’t easy for Charles McGregor.

“I sent out resumes and did very well on the tests I wrote,” he remembers. “I would get 97 per cent and then be told there were about 500 applicants, the cut-off mark was 97.5 per cent and only two of the applicants achieving that mark would be hired for two spots.”

Despite being open to job offers across the province, Toronto was his first choice.

“That is really where I wanted to make that mark because it’s one of the most diverse cities in the world,” said McGregor who completed the Firefighter/Fire Science program at Mohawk College.

After nearly five of years of applying to Ontario Fire Services, writing exams and volunteering with Burlington Fire Service, he got his wish.

Graduating from the academy in 2001, McGregor was posted to Station 413 in the Finch Ave. W. and Albion Rd. area. Eighteen months later, he was assigned to Station 331 in the Queen St. W. and Strachan Ave. area where he spent 15 years up until 2018.

Charles McGregor has been a Toronto firefighter for nearly two decades (Photo by Shawna Coulter)

While at Station 325 in Regent Park for a year and a half, he was promoted to Acting Captain and sent to Station 133 at Keele St. W. and Lawrence Ave. W. for a year.

When an opening for an Acting Captain arose at Station 331, he returned in April 2020 and was assigned to the truck he worked on for 15 years.

There are three trucks at the station with three different crews, Captains and Acting Captains.

Historically, the face of Toronto Fire Service has been White and male.

In the last few years, there has been a concerted push to make the organization more diverse.

In his almost two decades on the job, McGregor has been the only Black at his station.

“There aren’t a lot of us, but we meet and talk about our experiences,” the married father of two children said.

Charles McGregor is an Acting Captain with Toronto Fire Service (Photo contributed)

Platoon Chief Trevor Trotter was the highest-ranking Black officer in Toronto before retiring a few years ago.

“When I asked him how he got the job, he actually told me about some of the things he went through at the start of his service,” said McGregor who is a Christmas Kettle volunteer with the Salvation Army. “What I took away from his story is that the struggles are the same for Black firefighters.”

He has also reached out to Deputy Chief Corey Beals of the Halifax Regional Service who is Canada’s most senior fire officer.

“I talked to him to find out how he got where he is and the one thing I brought away from the discussion was the need to get higher education,” said McGregor who aspires to be a senior manager.

The product of Jamaican parents who were part of the Windrush Generation that went to England in the 1950s to fill labour shortages after the Second World, McGregor and his family migrated to Canada in 1973.

Diagnosed with asthma at age two, he feels, forced his parents to move to another country after his older sister succumbed to an asthma attack at age 16.

“Mom had sisters living in the United States and my dad had a cousin in Hamilton,” McGregor recalled. “With Canada being part of the Commonwealth and racism not as rampant here as it is in the United States were major reasons that my parents chose this country.”

Enlisted in the Canadian Armed Forces for five years with the Royal Canadian Artillery 11th Field Regiment, he was also a Child & Youth Worker before joining the Fire Service.

Firefighting is a risky and dangerous job and McGregor has had a few close calls, including being caught in a flashover. He also rescued a colleague from a burning building in the Little Portugal neighbourhood five years ago.

He pulled the firefighter, who was trapped on the boarding house’s second floor, onto the tip of an aerial ladder.

“I broke the window with my axe and I stuck my hand inside to see if I could reach the floor to verify if there was indeed a floor there that we could get in,” said McGregor  who played a leading role in resuscitating the Firefighters Combat Challenge after joining the Service. “I hit something that I thought was a fridge. As I turned around to tell the Captain we couldn’t get in because the windows were far too narrow, the trapped firefighter put his arm up on the window sill from the inside.  

“When I pulled the arm towards me, his head came up and I could see the top of it was burnt. He was conscious and pleading with me to get him out before he died. I had to take his air tank off in order to pull him through the window. If I didn’t come across him when I did, we would have had a funeral because no one knew he was there. The guy is about 6’2” and weighing around 240 pounds and the window that I pulled him out of was about 11 inches wide.”

The family of the injured firefighter, who was hospitalized with serious injuries and off the job for two years, is eternally grateful to McGregor who completed the Fire Services Executive Management Certificate program in 2018 and is enrolled in Ryerson University’s Public Administration & Governance program.

“Every year on October 11, I get a text from his wife saying, ‘Thank you’, for saving their loved one,” he said.

McGregor and his crew were honoured with a citation in March 2018.