Not My Emergency: The (Double) Life of a Volunteer Firefighter

Not My Emergency recounts 21 years of balancing the role as a volunteer firefighter, school teacher/principal, husband and father in small town Alberta, Canada. Chief Ian McLaren recounts many of his most memorable calls, but the book is more focused on the dichotomy of trying to make the difficult transition from ‘regular life’ to emergency scenes and back again while maintaining my sanity. Some of the stories are humorous, a few of them are tragic and most have elements of both.

There are a few great books about firefighting, with stories about fires far bigger, rescues more daring and close calls more hair-raising than any volunteers would be able to truthfully relate.   In Not My Emergency Chief McLaren tells a few pretty good fire stories of his own, but he also hopes this book will relay something quite distinctive from other works.

The differences lie in the fact that, unlike volunteers, career firefighters do their jobs and then they go home for a break, away from their workplaces, just like doctors, plumbers and members of every other profession.  Many full timers have more training, newer equipment or specialized skill sets and assignments.  However, their jobs are their jobs.  They have work hours and off duty hours.  If a call comes into their station when they are off duty, someone else takes care of it.  A volunteer firefighter’s experience is something very different, and that is the real story Ian McLaren shares in this memoir.