CWO Alain Carrière will be retiring from the CF on 28 February 2012, after more then 32 years & 11 months of loyal and dedicated service to the National Defence Fire Service, the Canadian Military Engineering Branch and the Canadian Forces.

CWO Carrière enrolled as a Firefighter on August 21st, 1979. After successfully completing his basic training at CFB St-Jean, Pte Carrière carried on to the CF Language School St-Jean for second language training, followed by Basic Driver Training at CFSAL Borden. Capable of communicating in both official languages and a qualified driver, Pte Carrière proceeded to Manitoba where he had a short stay to conduct contact training at CFB Portage La Prairie.

After completing his QL3 basic Firefighter training in November, 1981, at the Canadian Forces School of Aerospace, Ordnance and Engineering (CFSAOE), as it was known back then, he was posted to beautiful British Columbia, CFB Comox for 4 years. In July 1985, a posting to onboard HMCS Assiniboine was to introduce him to the Navy life onboard famous St-Laurent Class destroyers. During the same posting, he was TD aboard HMCS Athabaskan in support of operations.

On completion of his 2 year sea duty, his following posting brought him to N.S. Annapolis Valley at CFB Greenwood, where he was promoted to MCpl in August, 1989. In 1992, MCpl Carrière was promoted to Sgt and transferred to CFB Chatham as Platoon Chief. After 3 years and following the closure of CFB Chatham, he was posted to FA(A) in August, 1995 where he managed numerous requests to support Firefighters onboard HMCS’s, while personally filling the Snr Firefighter positions onboard HMCS Fredericton, Montreal, Halifax and Provider.

On completion of his 3 year sea duty, Sgt Carrière was promoted to WO in July, 1998 and posted to 12 Wing Shearwater as Deputy Fire Chief were he was responsible for operations, administration, finance and management of 36 personnel as well as acting as Wing Fire Chief on multiple occasions. His dedication and hard work resulted in a promotion to MWO and a posting to CFFA, in August, 2001 as the Standard’s MWO. In August 2003, he was promoted to CWO and had the honour of becoming CFFA’s Chief for a year. His foresight and meticulous work made him a natural fit to be appointed as the lead to the amalgamation of CFFA and the NBC School resulting in the emergence of CFFCA.

In April, 2005, CWO Carrière was selected to partake in a special project analysing statistics within Air Force occupations and was posted to the Chief of the Air Staff organisation at D Air Pers Strat as the first Firefighter into that position. The objective was to develop a model forecasting attrition and trends within the Air Force. The accrued experience acquired during that project prepared him for his next challenging appointment in November, 2006, as the Geo Tech and Firefighter Career Manager.

In August, 2009, unfortunately, CWO Carrière became ill and consequently was posted to CFB Halifax, returning home after 8 years on IR. Alain, Carole and Simon, will be staying in the HRM for the foreseeable future, where Alain plans on shuttling Simon to his numerous activities - snowboarding, music lessons and recording – and tackling the “honey-do list” that has been growing over the years.