Ontario's first female fire chief, Vaughan's Deryn Rizzi, says 'it's a calling'

Fire chief gets up between 4 and 5 a.m. to work out, drives herself to be leader of 341 employees

Yokregion.com
June 12, 2018
Tim Kelly

The first female fire chief of a professional service in Ontario makes it crystal clear the people of Vaughan are getting someone fully committed to the job.

Deryn Rizzi tells an interviewer she spends about “90 per cent” of her time on her work life, including nights and weekends.

And after an hour with the 43-year-old, who took over from predecessor Larry Bentley last week, it’s easy to tell.

Rizzi is intent and serious about her new role and takes her responsibilities as the head of the 341-employee department, which includes 300 full-time firefighters with the gravity she feels the job demands.

A 17-year veteran of Vaughan Fire and Emergency Services, Rizzi was promoted to the job of chief after serving as deputy fire chief since 2013.

She explains she starts each day between 4 and 5 a.m. and heads to the fire department’s gym or goes for a run. A former three-time member of the Canadian triathlon team and the Ontario cycling team, Rizzi is competitive and in top physical shape.

She said it’s important that, as chief, she serve as a role model for her officers.

She said all the staff go through physicals on an annual basis and if they pass the medical they go through physical fitness training.

“As a leader, if you’re expecting your staff to go through certain testing or criteria, you yourself should be able to do it so when we rolled that out three years ago, I was the first to step on the treadmill, the first to go through the physical fitness.”

Rizzi noted that the last few classes of recruits scored perfect scores on their physical fitness tests at York University, something she’s clearly proud of. She said she considers firefighters “industrial athletes.”

Rizzi, a divorced mother of two teenage daughters, had her own life-changing experience in the late 1990s when, while teaching with the York Region District School Board she decided she needed a new career.

While swimming with some master’s athletes who happened to be firefighters she heard about firefighter training and openings at Toronto, Markham and Vaughan and applied at all three. She was accepted at Vaughan and the rest is history.

The daughter of two teachers and sister of a teacher, Rizzi had acquired a bachelor of arts and bachelor of education while studying at Queen’s University in Kingston. After teaching in Keswick and Newmarket for three years, she felt she needed a change in her working life.

“Sometimes you get into a career and decide this is not what you want to do for the next 30 years of your life,” she summed up.

What attracted her to firefighting was the idea that “every day you go in and you have no idea how your day is going to unravel; you need incredibly strong social skills. I’m a very social person, I like to interact with people and in the fire service you’re doing that on a daily basis,” she said.

A self-described Type A personality, Rizzi said most firefighters are similar in makeup to her.

“If you take a look at the individuals that apply to firefighting, with sports there’s that whole adrenalin rush, in terms of competition and winning and training, they are absolutely Type A,” she said, adding the type of people who apply are “very intelligent people who come in with either college diplomas, degrees, a ton of different certificates and they are physically fit.”

Rizzi made her role, while deputy chief, to work hard to push the Vaughan Fire Service into the public eye with more community-themed events and more public outreach. She said the service has become more visible in recent years.

“Our firefighters are everywhere in terms of events, you see them in the media all the time,” she said, adding the department previously didn’t a great job promoting that.

“Our community understands we’re here, we want to meet their challenges, we want one-on-one conversations.”

The new chief’s focus is on getting all her firefighters fully certified under new laws passed by the province that require services across Ontario to meet tough new standards within the next few years.

She is hard at work on that task, plus involved in training for risk assessment for the City of Vaughan when she isn’t doing volunteer work, sitting on various boards and helping out charities like the local food bank or Hospice Vaughan. She is also aide-de-camp for Lt.-Gov. Elizabeth Dowdeswell.

Does she worry about burnout?

Rizzi doesn’t brush off the question but also doesn’t seem to be concerned.

“I enjoy what I do. I enjoy being with people. Every day I come to work, our people are incredible people, we have a wonderful city. As a chief officer I feel I have the ability to influence change, it’s a calling.”