Photo courtesy Town of Brome Lake
Kevin Robinson
By Ruby Pratka
Local Journalism Initiative
Hudson native and Navy veteran Kevin Robinson is the new fire chief and public safety director at the Town of Brome Lake.
“I’ve always loved the area around Brome Lake, which I would visit on bike trips. I kind of jokingly said I would retire there…and it turns out I don’t even have to retire,” said Robinson, who took office at the beginning of summer.
Robinson has had a decades-long fascination with firefighting and fire prevention. “I served in the Navy, and everyone in the Navy learns to be a firefighter, because when you’re on a ship at sea and there’s a fire, you can’t just come out on deck and wait for the fire department,” he said. “I found firefighting really interesting; I knew it was something I wanted to do in the civilian world as a volunteer, and from there I managed to turn a hobby into a job.”
Robinson served in the Navy until 2012, when he took a civilian job as regional emergency and security co-ordinator with what is now called Public Services and Procurement Canada. He later worked with the Canadian Space Agency, in a role he described as “very managerial.”
“The pandemic gave me time to reflect on the fact that I didn’t really enjoy [that job] because I didn’t have much contact with people,” he said. “I thought maybe it was time to go back to school and train as a fire prevention technician.”
Robinson, who is bilingual, worked in fire prevention in Sainte-Angèle-de-Monnoir for several years before applying for the open Brome Lake position. In Brome Lake, he oversees both the on-call fire department and the paramedic service, a total of about 50 people. He said one of the major challenges the fire department faces is finding people who are willing to be on call 20 hours a week, willing and able to step away from school, work or family commitments to respond to calls.
“It’s also a challenge to make sure that everyone is trained properly, and to get to know everyone,” he added. “I’m the outsider – I just got here at the end of May.” He said he kept a line of communication open with the newly accredited firefighters’ union “so that if there’s anything that’s problematic, we can get it on the table and talk about it.”
He said he’s looking forward to inaugurating the long-awaited new fire hall, working with a state-of-the-art truck the town recently ordered and potentially running a recruitment drive. In closing, he reminded Brome Lake residents to avoid distracted driving and check their smoke detectors regularly.