Saskatchewan paramedic retires after 50 years on the job

After 50 years in emergency medical services, Pat Bellisle is retiring following nearly four decades in Prince Albert. Jasmine Pelletier has the story.

Pat Bellisle is hanging up his uniform at the end of March. After working for 50 years as a paramedic, Bellisle has been around to see the field become what it is today.

He shared that the first ambulance he worked in was a 1961 GMC panel truck that only carried two oxygen tanks and a stretcher.

“When I first started it was first aid. Not much that you could actually do, just basically bandage and CPR,” said Bellisle.

He became an advanced care paramedic shortly after the job was created in the 1970s and was in his college’s second-ever graduating class.

Bellisle spent the beginning of his career in Alberta, where he eventually became assistant director of the Medicine Hat Ambulance Service.

“We did do a train wreck, in Medicine Hat,” Bellisle recounted.

“There was the evacuation of all of Riverside area. Turned out me and my partner [were] the only ones that transported an actual patient out of the train wreck there. But that was written up in Carleton University at that time.”

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Bellisle and his family moved to Prince Albert 38 years ago and Bellisle says that the amount of paramedics working in the city has drastically increased.

“When I first came here, there was eight full time and I think it was 14 casual,” he said. “Now we’re pushing the 100-mark. Plus, we have dispatch as well.”

Bellisle said the people he’s met, including patients and healthcare workers, have been a highlight of his career.

“I’ve transferred an awful lot of people that are 100 years and better and it was great. One of them was the last midshipman out of England that actually was on and trained on a sailing ship.”

Bellisle is looking forward to retirement, which he says will be spent working in the community and walking his dog.