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Fire chief speaks out against mayoral candidate

Russell Mack tells his side of the human rights complaint

Russell Mack has been a firefighter for 35 years.

A gruff, straight-talking chief, he’s been in charge of the Pemberton Fire District since 1996. Wherever he goes, there’s little question as to who’s in charge of the department — a hat paying tribute to firefighters killed on 9/11 sits atop his graying head, and a memorial honouring that day’s fallen firefighters hangs on the far wall of his office.

It’s out of a deep concern for his community that he’s speaking to Pique this September morning. He worries that a village he’s served for over a decade could elect a village council member who just a year ago could have ended his career.

“I want people to understand what kind of an individual this guy is,” Mack says.

He’s talking about David Andrew MacKenzie, a village councillor and candidate for mayor in November’s municipal election.

MacKenzie brought a human rights complaint against Mack and the Village of Pemberton in 2007. In documents filed with the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal, MacKenzie alleged that he was passed over for a promotion while serving as a volunteer firefighter because of his sexuality. He also said that Mack had repeatedly made homophobic jokes and that there was a “naked girl calendar” on the wall of the fire hall.

A complaint settlement was reached before the matter went to the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal. That settlement asked Mack to provide MacKenzie with a letter of apology and the village to reimburse him for “all reasonable expenses” up to $5,000.

A VOP letter obtained under a Freedom of Information request shows that MacKenzie received $5,000. It also stated that the village paid $12,480.44 for its own legal fees.

According to this document, the human rights complaint cost Pemberton taxpayers a total of $17,480.44, though councillor Mark Blundell has said in a previous Pique story that the number sounded “a little light” to him.

The Village of Pemberton also held harassment-awareness training after the complaint, which the village paid for.

The complaint made headlines in April of this year, landing MacKenzie’s face on the front page of the Vancouver Sun and netting a “Human Rights” story in Xtra West , a prominent newspaper in Vancouver’s gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual community.

The Xtra West story paraphrases MacKenzie as saying there is a culture of homophobia at the Pemberton fire department and at fire halls in general. “It’s like an old boys club,” he told Xtra West . “There’s a culture there that’s just not right.”

MacKenzie also told the paper: “I’ve got people giving me the finger. I’ve had people try to run me off the road. I’ve received death threats.”

Speaking now for the first time about the complaint, Mack admits he said he wouldn’t want MacKenzie in an officer’s position, but it has nothing to do with his sexuality.

“I made this statement… because the power part of it goes to his head,” Mack says. “He took that to mean that I wouldn’t want somebody like him because he’s gay, right, well the fact of the matter was I knew he was gay the day he got here. So if that was an issue, he wouldn’t have been here… I have no issue with that at all.”

In a response to the complaint, Mack said the acting captain position was not vacant or advertised. At the time Deputy Chief Richard Doucet was going on holiday and in such situations it’s regular protocol to have any one of three senior firefighters step into his place. MacKenzie “wasn’t even in the running” as a number of other firefighters had seniority over him.

“In the scheme of things he was a junior firefighter here,” Mack says.

Mack does, however, admit that he told a joke around the fire hall with one of the offending words.

“Everybody wears these hats, right,” he says, pointing to a black baseball cap on his head. “Some of the young guys would put them on backwards and I go, no no no, you don’t wear baseball hats backwards, right, there’s only two people that are allowed to wear them backwards. That’s a sniper and a catcher, and you’re neither one of those.”

A second version of the joke involved the word “cocksucker,” but he says he never told it around MacKenzie.

Mack also admits that there were, at one time, calendars at the fire hall with pictures of scantily-clad women — Maxim and firefighter calendars, he says, not “naked girl” ones.

When the complaint was filed, Mack and MacKenzie had the option of either settling it or going to a hearing — both were interested in a settlement. Mack says in an interview that because both were interested in settling, they agreed not to make any public statements regarding the complaint.

But one day in early April, Doucet was walking to the fire hall and found MacKenzie getting his picture taken by Bonny Makarewicz, a locally-based photographer who does freelance work for the Vancouver Sun .

Doucet asked him what he was doing and MacKenzie responded, “I have to make my money somehow” and then walked away.

On April 11, Sun readers opened up their papers to find MacKenzie’s picture on the front page with the headline, “Homophobia at Pemberton fire hall intolerable: councillor.” The story noted that Mack formerly worked with the fire department in Richmond, B.C., which came under fire in 2006 when a female firefighter alleged discrimination there.

Mack first met MacKenzie in the latter’s capacity as general manager of the Pemberton Valley Lodge, where he still works today. Mack had been doing inspections at the lodge and started to get acquainted with the future councillor, who moved to Pemberton in 2004. As they became acquainted, MacKenzie told the fire chief about his experience as a paramedic and volunteer firefighter.

“He kept telling me all this stuff he’s done and I thought, there’s a really good guy to have on the department,” Mack says.

Mack was so impressed with MacKenzie’s experience that he decided to take him on as a volunteer firefighter without even interviewing him. MacKenzie applied to be a firefighter in November 2004, citing his experience with CPR training, First Aid and National Lifeguard Certification.

Things started to turn sour between Mack and MacKenzie on July 2, 2006, when the Pemberton Fire District responded to a call at Lillooet Lake Estates.

MacKenzie “on his own initiative” took an engine that wasn’t supposed to be used for calls in Area C. Mack told him to take it back.

The next day Mayor Jordan Sturdy called Mack, saying that MacKenzie claimed the fire chief sent people out in unsafe equipment.

“I just said to him, that’s absolutely ridiculous,” Mack said. “I said the fact of the matter is the trucks were all certified by us two weeks ago.”

Mack believes that incident was the start of a campaign by MacKenzie to make the fire chief look bad.

A high-placed source within the Pemberton Fire District confirmed that MacKenzie would repeatedly go out to the bar with other firefighters and “basically bash the establishment.” The source also heard from other firefighters that MacKenzie was “basically attempting to get Russell fired.”

Eventually the conflict wound up with the complaint to the Human Rights Tribunal.

MacKenzie did not return requests for comment.

Now a mayoral candidate, MacKenzie still lists himself as a volunteer firefighter with the Pemberton Fire Rescue Department, although he’s been suspended by Mack since September 2007.

Today, Mack regrets ever allowing MacKenzie into the Pemberton Fire District. And he doesn’t want him in the mayor’s chair.

That decision, however, rests in Pemberton voters’ hands on Nov. 15.