Bert Faibish
Ticats.ca
The next time you see that familiar, bright red fire engine fly past you with it’s sirens blaring, take a good look at the men on the back. You might just see a familiar face.
Sandy Beveridge has been playing safety with the Tiger-Cats for the past seven seasons but decided to try something a little different last off-season when he set his sights on tackling fires.
“Firefighting is something that I’ve always had an interest in and once I moved into the Binbrook area I saw an advertisement for volunteer firefighters, so I put in a resume,” said Beveridge.
“I got on last year and through last offseason I did 250 hours of training with Hamilton Emergency Services before I started responding to calls,” he said.
As someone who obviously enjoys excitement, Sandy has been lucky to find another job that like football, continues to present unique and difficult challenges.
“I enjoy going on calls the most, you never know what you’re going to find once you arrive,” said Beveridge. “We’ve been out on a wide array of calls from house fires and barn fires to car accidents and medical calls.”
Training to be a firefighter is widely regarded as one of the most rigorous and difficult training regimens out there. Perhaps second only to professional sports.
“It’s funny, Football keeps you in shape for firefighting and firefighting keeps you in shape for football,” chuckled Beveridge.
Once the season starts, the challenges of balancing both jobs can make for some very long nights.
“It can be really hard in the middle of the season when you’ve put in a long day of practice and your pager goes off in the middle of the night,” said Sandy.
“You’re exhausted and you know that you have to get up early the next morning but somebody’s relying on you so you have to get up and answer that call.”
Even though the responsibilities that come hand in hand with the job make it difficult to make room for personal time, the rewards make it worthwhile.
“Sometimes you can be in the middle of plans with family or friends but the pager doesn’t know that,” said Beveridge.”You just have to put what you’re doing on hold and get out there,” he said.
Professional athletes know that they can’t play the game forever and Sandy could see himself pursuing fighting fires when his playing days are done.
“I love it even more than I thought I would and in the future it’s definitely something I will consider doing on a full-time basis.”
