Warriors For The Working Day

In 1990, seeking an escape from city life, John Wiznuk moved to Saturna Island in British Columbia’s Southern Gulf Islands. Two years later, a friend invited him to one of the regular practices of the volunteer fire department. What began as a volunteer, part-time hobby soon became his life, launching a twenty-year involvement with the Saturna Island Volunteer Fire Department. He resigned as fire chief in 2012. Most people’s understanding of what volunteer firefighters do extends no further than childhood notions of big red trucks with flashing lights and screaming sirens zooming somewhere to save the day. The reality is more complex. Firefighters never know what the next call will be, or what they will find when they reach the site. The challenges extend beyond the physical ones of extinguishing flames, rescuing individuals, and dealing with disaster. People in stressful situations are unpredictable. Even those being helped may lash out. And within the fire department itself, as there are wherever there are human beings, there are squabbles, politics, and personality conflicts. Yet through it all, volunteer firefighters persevere, thinking quickly, adapting, dealing with the inevitable problems, focusing on solutions—making it happen, somehow, someway. In this heartfelt, fascinating, and deeply felt memoir, Wiznuk recounts the struggles and achievements, failures and successes, of his two decades as an emergency responder. It’s the story of one small rural volunteer fire service—but it’s also the universal story of similar services across Canada and around the world, wherever ordinary citizens voluntarily join forces to protect their homes and community...and in the process, become extraordinary.

Based on Peter Elstob’s own wartime experiences, Warriors for the Working Day follows one tank crew as they proceed from the beaches of Normandy into newly liberated Western Europe, brilliantly evoking the claustrophobia, heat and intensity of tank warfare.

As the human-run Federation and the alien Coordination head closer and closer to an inevitable conflict, the crew of the Federation's starcruiser Shenandoah may be the world's last hope for peace. Original.

In 1990, seeking an escape from city life, John Wiznuk moved to Saturna Island in British Columbia's Southern Gulf Islands. Two years later, a friend invited him to one of the regular practices of the volunteer fire department. What began as a volunteer, part-time hobby soon became his life, launching a twenty-year involvement with the Saturna Island Volunteer Fire Department. He resigned as fire chief in 2012. Most people's understanding of what volunteer firefighters do extends no further than childhood notions of big red trucks with flashing lights and screaming sirens zooming somewhere to save the day. The reality is more complex. Firefighters never know what the next call will be, or what they will find when they reach the site. The challenges extend beyond the physical ones of extinguishing flames, rescuing individuals, and dealing with disaster. People in stressful situations are unpredictable. Even those being helped may lash out. And within the fire department itself, as there are wherever there are human beings, there are squabbles, politics, and personality conflicts. Yet through it all, volunteer firefighters persevere, thinking quickly, adapting, dealing with the inevitable problems, focusing on solutions-making it happen, somehow, someway. In this heartfelt, fascinating, and deeply felt memoir, Wiznuk recounts the struggles and achievements, failures and successes, of his two decades as an emergency responder. It's the story of one small rural volunteer fire service-but it's also the universal story of similar services across Canada and around the world, wherever ordinary citizens voluntarily join forces to protect their homes and community...and in the process, become extraordinary....

WARS CHANGE, WARRIORS DON'T We are all warriors. Each of us struggles every day to define and defend our sense of purpose and integrity, to justify our existence on the planet and to understand, if only within our own hearts, who we are and what we believe in. Do we fight by a code? If so, what is it? What is the Warrior Ethos? Where did it come from? What form does it take today? How do we (and how can we) use it and be true to it in our internal and external lives? The Warrior Ethos is intended not only for men and women in uniform, but artists, entrepreneurs and other warriors in other walks of life. The book examines the evolution of the warrior code of honor and "mental toughness." It goes back to the ancient Spartans and Athenians, to Caesar's Romans, Alexander's Macedonians and the Persians of Cyrus the Great (not excluding the Garden of Eden and the primitive hunting band). Sources include Herodotus, Thucydides, Plutarch, Xenophon, Vegetius, Arrian and Curtius--and on down to Gen. George Patton, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, and Israeli Minister of Defense, Moshe Dayan.