Ottawa Fire Services’ calendar commemorates once in a lifetime call

What comes to mind when asked about your most memorable call? Most firefighters will have one that sticks out in their minds, a go-to story to share.

Ottawa Fire Department is taking this thought exercise one step further: sharing the story of some members of their department have called a “once in a lifetime” response in the form of a calendar.

On Oct. 27, 2023, a transformer caught on fire on the third floor of the Ottawa Hospital. It was contained quickly, but there was lots of smoke, and the building had to rely on its backup emergency power.

The problem came as the response rolled into its second day.

“The backup power went out, which made things very complicated,” said Nicholas DeFazio, public information officer for Ottawa Fire Services. “A lot of these little tiny babies, as small as 600 grams, they’re attached to multiple machines, they have a respiratory therapist beside them at all times. They needed to be moved over to the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario [CHEO].”

Thus began a two-hour collaboration between the firefighters and hospital staff to move 17 neonatal babies down eight flights of stairs individually.

“They put each of them in a stretcher; it kind of looked like a normal sized stretcher but had a pocket in the centre,” said Brendan White, one of the responding firefighters. “The really little guys on CPAP had a firefighter at either end of the stretcher, a nurse or a doctor and a respiratory therapist. We could only move one baby at a time down to the bottom floor where staff from the CHEO team came over with their incubator.”

The effort was a success, as all 17 babies were moved without incident. What’s more, the call provided a totally unique subject matter for the department’s 2025 calendar.

“Obviously, firefighter calendars are very well known, but in Ottawa, I don’t think we’ve done the more sexualized calendar in about 14 years,” said DeFazio, who was approached by hospital staff with the idea for the calendar. “They came with this very unique idea of doing a doing a calendar, but with the firefighters holding the babies.”

The calendar features 13 of the children posing with Ottawa firefighters, with proceeds going towards The Ottawa Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and The Ottawa First Responders Foundation, which aims to augment the services and support provided to Ottawa first responders through peer and clinical support as well as education.

Once the idea was approved by the union charity director, executing came down to effective coordination.

“It was really a team effort of everyone kind of coming together to make it happen,” DeFazio said. “The nurses and the doctors were fantastic at coordinating the babies, so we did the whole photo shoot in one day. The hospital staff was on scene to come and support the photo shoot, which gave them a change to see the families again. Honestly, we didn’t have one crying baby.”

DeFazio credited the joint effort of multiple community members in delivering the end product, including photographer Ashley Metzger and SURE Print and Graphics in Orleans for providing their services free of charge.

For White, who is featured in the January photo, the calendar served as a reminder of that night and the collaboration between firefighters and hospital staff.

“There were so many things that went wrong in that day, to then have that whole maneuver go off without a hitch was pretty spectacular, and I think it speaks to the professionalism of the staff at CHEO and at Ottawa Hospital,” he said.

In addition, the photo shoot served as an opportunity for him to see the impact of the department’s work, something he noted wasn’t common in the fire service.

“Firefighters so often go to a call, deal with the scene, hand it over to someone else, and that’s it,” White said. “Seeing what you do and understanding how you are a cog in the wheel of someone’s bigger story really kind of hit home.”

The department printed 2000 calendars and has already sold half of that stock.

To purchase the calendar, visit here.