Dr. Tony Howarth
Yes, I’m not just one of the instructors, I get to do the web-thing as well, so welcome.
Now you may be wondering why there’s an English pharmacist & a French Canadian teaching you first aid here in B.C. It’s a good question. Let me explain….
Back in the 90’s I was still in Pharmacy school and didn’t even know Canada was in my future. But First Aid was. It would look good on the resume of a new pharmacist, right? Now look what happened… somehow it stuck and here I am, still at it, ready to teach you.
It was probably 1994-5 when I first started ‘doing’ first aid on people. Working for the British Red Cross lead to some good times (and good experiences with hundreds? thousands? of people treated): Hundreds of concerts, work at Old Trafford, crewing ambulances, all kinds of fun. And training too – when you have to cover big events like these, you need lots of people trained, so I learned how to teach and got on with it.
I’ve no idea how many hundreds of people I taught back in the UK. Eventually I got so interested in first aid I learned how to be a casualty (a lot of learning can happen when you practice on acting people!) worked with the local first aid team and eventually lead them to win the National First Aid Competition. We even went on to compete in Switzerland, the home of the Red Cross. (No, we didn’t win.)
Eventually I came to Canada and as I was waiting to write my Canadian Pharmacy exams I volunteered with the Red Cross here. One of the jobs they asked me to do was to travel to Mt Currie and teach the folks there. Seems no-one else wanted to travel so far from Vancouver. So I did as I was told! Later I eventually settled in Squamish.
Seeing that there was essentially no first aid training for anyone north of Horseshoe Bay, I chatted with the Red Cross and eventually started Sea 2 Sky Safety Training Services in 2005. I was surprised to find there were so many people with no choice but to travel a long way to a course – that needed changing. The aim was to bring the best possible training anywhere it was needed.
That started, obviously, in Mt Currie. Then in Squamish; then Whistler. Along with Marylene to help, we now go wherever you need us, from The Island to The Interior. We’ll meet you in plush hotels, Great Halls & Long Houses, your office, school or your own home. If none of that works, we’ll welcome you into our own homes to get the training done. We feel you deserve professional, engaging training even if you don’t happen to live in Vancouver.
Oh yes, Marylene! She also had years of experience as a rig medic in Alberta and as a first aid instructor there before moving to Squamish. We share the same goal of bringing you excellence in training wherever you are. So it made sense to team up and do so.
And now look – more than a decade later we really don’t know how many people we’ve taught (because we’re not counting) but it looked like about 1,500 people in 2016. That could be anyone from kids in school to our local doctors, nurses, dentists and other healthcare professionals. Everyone gets engaging training appropriate to their skills and needs.
Of course, we live in an officially bi-lingual country, so we offer training in both official languages.
Now, how can we bring professional, engaging training to help you? Choose a course from the menu, or simply get in touch. I’ll be waiting for you.
