BCom alum trades in a career in marketing to become a firefighter

Lesly Yao (BCom’18) isn’t your stereotypical small-town Quebec firefighter. Born in Tahiti, the Bachelor of Commerce grad was growing disillusioned with her work at a marketing firm when a Canadian Forces recruitment advertisement caught her eye—and her imagination. But because Yao was not a citizen at the time and a job with the Forces was not in the cards. “I’d always had it in the back of my mind to become a firefighter,” she says. “I watched shows about firefighting, and it appealed to me, but it also seemed unattainable. In 2021, Yao enrolled in l’Institut de protection contre les incendies du Quebec (IPIQ), then landed a job in Brownsburg-Chatham, a small town between Ottawa and Montreal. “It can be tiring sometimes,” says Yao. “But you can be proud of your work, and in the camaraderie of the firehouse, you forget all about the difficult parts.”