by Nic Hume
BCEHS Paramedic Michael Dussault’s journey into paramedicine began long before he even signed up to take a first aid course and led to a career in both first aid and paramedicine that has seen him save lives and make a remarkable volunteer contribution to his community.
Like many children of the 1970s, a young Michael Dussault grew up watching Emergency! and M*A*S*H - Johnny Gage, Roy Desoto, Hawkeye Pierce and Trapper John McIntyre were regular visitors the family living-room. He was held rapt by their adventures.
Diagnosed at an early age as an asthmatic who "was never really gifted in terms of sports or athletics… I spent a lot of time with books as friends," Michael said.
"My first exposure to the work of St. John Ambulance was hijacking my father's copies of First Aid to the Injured that were sitting on bookshelves in the house. I'd always had an interest in first aid."
Only six years old at the time, the pocket textbooks were appropriately sized for a youngster, and the pictures and words made good companion-reading to De Soto and Pierce’s on-screen adventures.
In the summer of 1983, Michael signed up for the only first-aid course he could register for at his age: a St. John Ambulance "Lifesaver" course. "It was the only way you could get access to a first aid course under the age of 15 at that time. It was the only thing offered to youth. Like, 14 or 15," Michael said.
"I was 12."
The course ran three hours a day, from 9 am to noon, Monday to Friday. At the end, he proudly received his Junior Lifesaver certificate. "I still have it at home..., sitting in the same little ID carrier I used to carry when I was at school."
Later that year, Michael’s 6th Cedar Hill Cub Scout Team won the Victoria District First Aid championship.
As a student at Victoria’s Mt. Doug High School, Michael’s interest in first aid flourished. His home-room teacher, Mr. Buckler, was the school’s first aid attendant.
"He kept [first aid] in my mind as something I should do a bit," Michael said. "I could do it and not exclusively walk away from it to be an academic person… He’d do lunchtime first aid practices with anybody that was interested in keeping their… skills up to speed."
By 1992, Dussault had registered for a CPR course, taught by a young BC Ambulance EMA-1 named Andrew MacPherson. At the end of the day, Dussault recalls MacPherson pulling him aside for a chat: "This is too easy for you, (he said). You need to challenge yourself."
"I utterly ignored him because I knew if I did that, I'd get distracted from my academic goals."
By July of 1993 Dussault had signed up to volunteer with St. John Ambulance Division 176 – well on his way to a life-long "distraction".
While Dussault’s first year with St. John Ambulance saw him focus on “getting up to speed” as a first aid volunteer, he recorded 95 hours of volunteer service. “Most of that was at the Saanich Fall Fair”, Michael said. “Still my favourite St. John event, 31 years later.”
By the end of 1997, Dussault had logged 5,962 hours of volunteer service with St. John. His early concerns about getting distracted were prophetic, and the “volunteer gig” quickly became a raison d’être.
He was, in a word, hooked.
“It was during those first few years with St. John that some of the good people there, who were already working for the ambulance service, or were heading in that direction, convinced me that I should try and do this for a living,” Michael said. Those “good people” included Kalani Polson, Tyrone Trotter, Mike Sugimoto, and Scott Sywake - paramedics who have gone to make their own marks at BCEHS.
“Back in that era, you went station to station with copies of your resume, and you phoned and made appointments with unit chiefs, and you went in, and you sold yourself to them,” Michael said. “They could hire you, reject you, or put you in the pile to be kept under consideration.”
As the admin officer for St. John Ambulance at that time, Michael tended to a BCEHS applicant’s St. John reference. “The unit chiefs would call me regularly for that,” Michael said. “Out of the blue, the Port Renfrew unit chief, Andel Farrish, asked if I’d ever thought of doing this job.”
Michael had dropped off a resume but had never heard anything back, and didn’t think he was a good fit. “Turns out that the previous unit chief had retired, and my application had gotten lost in the transition,” he said.
When Farrish asked “Would you still like to work for the Ambulance Service?” The answer was obvious and immediately followed by directions to drive out to Station 115 for a job interview.
“That’s how I got hired,” Michael said. “On a September morning I got into my forest green 1974 Plymouth Valiant and drove two hours along a very windy, and bumpy, West Coast road, for my interview.”
New-hire orientation and training began soon after.
“Orientation, at that time, consisted of the unit chief showing you how to fill out your payroll form, confirming you could take a blood pressure - because most people with OFA 3 didn’t know how to do that. A bit of Code 3 driving down Harris Creek Main and Gordon River Main (logging roads around Port Renfrew) to see if we got scared or spooked by our own sirens, and that was about it,” Michael said. “The sirens were still on the hood of the ambulance at this point, so you got a lot more blast-back from them than you do today.”
The shift patterns at Port Renfrew at the time were unusual but intended to accommodate the only two local employees at the station. The “day” shift was from 0000 to 1700, while the night shift was from 1700 to 0000.
“It was a weird split” Michael noted. “You didn’t go home if you were just missing one night shift, that’s for sure… In the winter though, I loved it, because the guy who drove the sand truck (to put grit on the road) came into town at 11:35 and left again just after midnight. I’d wait 10 minutes and follow him all the way back to Jordan River.”
Michael worked in Port Renfrew for 28 months.
“It was a choice,” he said. “I really liked working there. I liked the community.”
In 1999 Dussault accepted a lateral transfer to Station 103, on Saltspring Island, where he worked for a eight or nine months before returning to the West Coast of Vancouver Island - Station 107, in Sooke. In total he spent six years and eleven months as a part-time employee before gaining enough seniority to apply for a full-time position in Vancouver, working his first shift as a full-time paramedic October 5, 2005.
Dussault spent the next five years working as an irregularly scheduled paramedic, and then holding a Holiday Relief / Spare-board position, until 2010, when an abundance of job-postings around the province provided an opportunity to take a lateral transfer home. When he learned that a colleague - the parent of a couple of teenagers - was only one person lower on the seniority list. Dussault declined the lateral transfer, commuting to Vancouver an additional four months before the next job posting got him home.
Dussault’s career trajectory - from a small remote station to a rural posting, then to Vancouver for years, before returning home, echoes the path taken by most BCEHS paramedics. If the trajectory of Dussault’s postings were the only metric used, his career wouldn’t look particularly unusual in comparison to the others around him.
Dussault’s dedication to serving his community, and supporting his colleagues, are a different story.
Throughout his 26 years with BCEHS, Dussault has maintained his involvement with St. John Ambulance in Victoria, leaving him well-placed to provide support and mentorship to people considering paramedicine as a career. Countless paramedics, nurses, doctors, and allied healthcare professionals have benefited in the early years of their careers from his wisdom, perspective, encouragement, and generosity.
Since first joining St. John Ambulance, Michael has volunteered over 32,000 hours. In 2022, he was promoted to the rank of Commander of the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, Canada’s oldest order of chivalry. He has also been awarded a Queen Elizabeth Golden Jubilee medal, King Charles III Coronation Medal, EMS Exemplary Service Medal, and Service Medal of the Order of St. John (with gold bar) in recognition of his exceptional volunteer service.
Dussault’s career with BCEHS has spanned 26 years. Following an off-duty injury in 2021, Michael now works supporting regional safety programs and mentoring the next generation of paramedics called to give back to their communities.
