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.