Hundreds of spectators descended upon Brantford’s Mohawk Park to watch the South Western Ontario Regional FireFit Championships on Sunday, July 26, 2026.
Nearly 300 firefighters from across Ontario and beyond gathered to show off their skills and athletic endurance throughout the weekend-long event.
Dale McRoberts, FireFit Championships’ past president and former Vancouver firefighter, said the competition started over 30 years ago.
“It was all based on a test they started in British Columbia to hire firefighters. The research showed that there were five essential tasks of firefighting, and when you put it into a test, you could use it for hiring,” he said. “Eventually the fire departments wanted to see who had the fittest firefighters. You know, was it Vancouver or Kamloops? Or was it Edmonton or Calgary? So it started as the hiring test and was like that for the first ten years, but then it evolved into a sport because in 1995 we travelled all across Canada to put on the competition.”
As part of the competition, firefighters, dressed in their bunkers suits and fitted with breathing apparatus, ran up six flights of stairs carrying a 42-pound weight. Once at the top they had to hoist another 42-pound hose up to the top of the tower and run back down. Using a mallet, the firefighters had to move a steel beam to simulate a forcible entry scenario.
“Then we stretch out on the course and run back to the pump, grab a charged line of hose and put out a ‘fire,’ and then we finish it off by doing a victim rescue,” said McRoberts. “It’s a 175-pound mannequin that we pull back about 140-feet. By that point, you’re just exhausted and tired, so that, along with the first part, is the hardest part.”
He continued, “Our people train to do this in the fire department, and the reason you train to do things like this is so you know you have enough reserve to finish your mission. If you try to go too fast, then you’re out of gas.”
While Saturday was all about the individual races, Sunday’s event was centered around the relay events where three to five team members each took on a portion of the course, as well as the Draeger Tech 2 relay.
Given that it’s been over a decade since the FireFit Competition last took place in the city, Josh Van Horne, President of the Brantford Professional Fire Fighters Association, said he was happy the weekend had finally arrived.
“It’s really exciting because it’s our first time in 14 years. The planning process started 12 months ago so there’s a lot of moving parts, but it’s a great gathering of first responders,” he said. “There’s 300 firefighters here from across the province and beyond, actually, we have some from Quebec and Iqaluit that came down too. We’re all here to promote health and wellness within our service, and the community’s obviously leaned into it as well because we’ve had a great turnout both days.”
Van Horne said one of the best parts of the weekend was welcoming everyone to the community.
“There’s a lot of camaraderie within the group; we hosted a social gathering last night just to get to know each other a little bit better,” he said. “A lot of these people have been competing for decades, so there’s a really good community within FireFit. We have a guy on our Brantford team, Paul Mitton, who’s been doing this since the early 2000s, and he’s still out here competing this weekend. It’s great to see that kind of continuity.”
Van Horne went on to say that he was thankful for everyone’s support in making the competition happen.
“A big thank you goes out to all of our sponsors and elected officials that made this possible, as well as the fire services and the community who has supported us,” he said. “Without them, we wouldn’t have been able to host this.”
Kimberly De Jong’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative.The funding allows her to report rural and agricultural stories from Blandford-Blenheim and Brant County. Reach her at kimberly.dejong@brantbeacon.ca.
