Fire chiefs banned from fire hall for life after snowmobiler hit and killed

The fire chief and deputy chief of a Nova Scotia volunteer fire department have been removed from their positions following the death of a snowmobiler who was struck and killed by a fire truck last week.

The Municipality of Cumberland council voted Wednesday to discharge fire Chief Jerrold Cotton and Deputy Chief Andrea Bishop and ban them for life from the fire station in the community of Collingwood Corner, N.S. Cotton and Bishop are married.

Cotton and Bishop also must remove all references to the Collingwood and district fire department from their personal vehicles, staff will recover all municipally owned property from the couple, and the locks will be changed at the fire hall. 

"Once the hard evidence came out on Monday about what had happened as far as the fire truck striking the victim, then it was time for us to act," Mayor Rod Gilroy told CBC News after a packed meeting on Wednesday.

Council held a closed-door meeting Tuesday and then an emergency meeting Wednesday after Blake Nicholson, 28, was killed on Friday night. He left behind a fiancée and a two-year-old son.

In his obituary, Nicholson is described as an avid outdoorsman who was able to fix anything, often becoming "everyone's reluctant mechanic."

"Despite his burly exterior, he has a soft kind heart and would go above and beyond to help others without hesitation," the obituary said.

The Collingwood and district volunteer fire department was called to help when Nicholson crashed his snowmobile on Wyvern Road near Poison Lake.

RCMP said the man was struck by the fire truck. He was pronounced dead a short time later. In an email to CBC News late Wednesday, Greg Herrett, the municipality's CAO, confirmed Cotton was driving the truck at the time of the incident.

After the incident, the fire truck and snowmobile were seized by RCMP as part of the investigation. 

Herrett told council on Wednesday that Cotton wasn't truthful with officials about hitting Nicholson with the fire truck, and did not tell them that the fire truck had been seized by police.

He also told council Cotton responded to an emergency call on Monday, despite publicly saying he would step away from his duties. He said Cotton had driven Bishop to the scene, and family members of the woman who called turned away assistance once they saw Cotton. 

At the meeting, friends and family of Nicholson questioned why it took so long for council to remove Cotton, who previously pleaded guilty to impaired driving in 2020. Municipal officials said he was driving a fire truck at the time.

According to Nova Scotia's public prosecution service, that included a fine of $2,000, a licence suspension from Nov. 30, 2020, to May 31, 2022, and an 18-month prohibition order on motor vehicles. Gilroy said the municipality also banned Cotton from driving municipal vehicles for about a year. 

Herrett told CBC News the municipality did not have the authority to remove individual chiefs or deputy chiefs of departments prior to the enactment of the bylaw the municipality used on Wednesday.

"The only option that was available to the municipality to deal with a situation like this would be to disband the department. Pretty extreme option. And so with the enactment of the bylaw, we were able to [discharge the volunteer fire chiefs] this time around," Herrett said.

Herrett said the bylaw, adopted in 2024, was in response to the charges laid against Cotton in 2020. It includes a code of conduct for chiefs and deputy chiefs, that Cotton and Bishop were found by council to be in violation of. 

No response from Cotton

Herrett said any information on Cotton's condition at the scene with the snowmobiler will be for the RCMP to determine. The RCMP told CBC News on Monday that they did not give Cotton a breathalyzer test.

CBC News has reached out to Cotton through the Collingwood and district fire department but has not received a reply.

Gilroy said he and the rest of the council are extremely concerned by the incident. He said this shouldn't affect the trust people of the county have in their fire departments.

"They put their lives on the line every day for the citizens of this county," he said. "Just because this has happened, you cannot add them — all the rest of them — into this. Not a chance, no. They're great people."