Ready for a new chapter
Published Saturday July 4th, 2009
Ann Cleveland began her career out of necessity, with a little bit of luck thrown in.
Thirty years later, she's retiring, taking with her the title of the longest reigning 9-1-1 operator in Canada.
"Basically, I was on my own with three kids and looking for a job. A friend of a friend said that there was going to be an opening at her employment, so I followed it up," she says.
The job was as a dispatcher for the fire department. Unfortunately, someone else got that position, but another spot opened up a couple of months later. She began work as a civilian dispatcher on Dec. 13, 1978.
"I had no idea what I was getting into because I thought I was answering phones, though I realized it was more than a receptionist job," she says.
Cleveland notes that at the time, it wasn't what it has evolved into today.
"It was shift work, which I didn't really clue into until I had accepted the job," she says. "You don't think about what it involves, especially when you're desperate."
Her work did involve taking telephone calls and 9-1-1 calls.
"From the 9-1-1 call, we decided whether it was fire, police or ambulance," she says. Poison control at that time wasn't a separate entity, it went right to the hospital.
"Fire we handled on our own, police you hot-keyed it to the girl across the hall - that's when we were up on York Street and fire and police were in the same building - or you hot-keyed it for an ambulance up to the hospital."
The dispatchers used what she calls a "key and plug" board, like Lily Tomlin used on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, complete with a headset. It's changed quite a bit since that, thanks to computers.
"But we still answer the phone," she says, noting that will probably change in the not too distant future. Then everything will be done on computer.
When she first started, her job also included monitoring all of the fire and burglar alarms in the city. This involved a board covered with numbers and lights, each corresponding to a business.
"It really became interesting when we had a lightning storm, as lightning sets off a lot of those things."
With approximately 150 fire alarms and 250 burglar alarms, she says, "conceivably, you could have 100 of them going off at a time."
In December 1983, communications were moved to the new police headquarters on Queen Street. The dispatch centres were amalgamated into an emergency services dispatch under the umbrella of the police department, with a fire dispatcher and a police dispatcher working on each shift and training one another in their respective jobs.
When the dispatch centres were first combined, it might have been two on a shift, but they could get by with one person.
Now there are five on a shift, says Cleveland, noting that a working unit is four.
The volume of calls they get is much bigger now than it was when she first began, as the city has grown and changed.
"We cover a wider area now, too. It's funny, people think we know everything about everywhere and every back road, but we don't. That's where the modern systems have helped us. We do have mapping systems we can refer to."
The address system that has been set up in the province makes a huge difference in helping get emergency services where they are supposed to go.
"Plus, we only dispatch Woodstock and Fredericton police, Fredericton and Oromocto fire, New Maryland and Nashwaak Valley fire," she says. "Those are the only things we dispatch and have to have a pretty good idea of where we're going."
Cleveland became a shift supervisor in 1988. It's a position she still holds today. That has allowed her to have taken part in the mentoring of most of the current communications operators in the centre. It's no wonder she refers to her co-workers as her family, and they affectionately call her 'Mother Cleveland.'
It can be a hard job, however, with the dispatchers dealing with heartbreaking incidents.
"Everyone in this type of job will tell you it's tough when there are children involved. But I think the toughest overall part is something in progress, and I'm being very general in that respect. If we know that there is a robbery going down, if there is a hostage taking, if someone is very, very ill, and you hear somebody in the background crying or screaming ... that just tears your heart right out."
Someone is screaming for help, and there is not a darn thing you can do, she says, except for your job. You have to get the facts straight, so you need to calm the caller down as best you can to get them the help that they need as quickly as possible.
The work doesn't come with a lot of outside praise, she says, so it is important to find satisfaction in a job well done.
"To know you did everything you could possibly do, especially if you know you did something a little extra," she says.
"I've really been blessed this year. Because of my tenure, an awful lot of people have talked to me and said, 'You've done a good job.' But we've done a good job, because no matter what you're doing in there, you're a team. One person can't do it by themselves."
Her last shift is today and, after that, Cleveland looks forward to not having any plans.
"That's got me a little giddy right now," she says. "I've spent the last 30 years with people saying, 'Can you do this?'"
She has no doubt that she'll be busy, as she and her partner, Ed Haines, have 16 grandchildren between the two of them and family scattered all over the place.
"We're not going to do a lot of travelling, we're not travellers. We like our own little corner."
She likes knowing that if she does want to do something, she can.
The lawn and gardens at their home usually keep Haines busy in the summer, then in the fall the couple enjoy going into the woods together hunting.
"We bird and deer hunt," says Cleveland. "Then Christmas will be here."
She expects by January, she might start looking for something to do.
"I'm a terrible road runner. It's unusual for me not to be in town at least once a day, even if it's just to go in and pick up eggs."
While she does have what some might consider a high-stress job, she isn't one to carry that with her once a shift finishes.
"I leave it there. I don't bring it home. Yes, I get tired, but once I go outside that door and it locks behind me, I'm almost rejuvenated. I don't have that weight on me."
When she is home, she has a number of hobbies she enjoys.
"I read, usually nothing too heavy." She also does a lot of sewing and knitting, "that sort of homey stuff."
She expects she will sew more once she has time, including doing things for other people.
"I don't want to do it as a business because then the fun goes out of it. When you have to do something, it's not relaxing anymore."
Cleveland is from Tay Creek, just "up the road" from where she lives now. She went to high school in Stanley and says she never really wanted to live anywhere else.
"I never had a big opportunity, but I never wanted to get away either," she says. "My first husband and I spent a year in Campbellton because he went to technical school up there."
She married Richard Cleveland when she was 20, though the couple later divorced.
"We were young when we married and we sort of grew apart as we grew up. There was no one thing that drove us apart," she says. "One thing we always agreed on is the kids. We always pretty well stuck together on that."
Cleveland has three children from her first marriage - Jason, Matthew and Adrienne.
Jason lives on PEI and has four children, two of them at home. Matthew has two and Adrienne has two. Both live in Rusagonis.
Cleveland and Ed Haines have been together 32 years. The couple met thanks to Cleveland's ex-husband. He and Haines were friends.
"Richard said 'I know a girl you'll like,'" says Cleveland. Haines wasn't sure about getting mixed up with a friend's ex at first, but they eventually met and hit it off.
By nature, Cleveland tends to be easy-going. She's not combative in any way.
"I'll talk myself out of a situation before I'll get involved in it," she says. "My kids are like that too. My kids have the gift of gab."
She believes she has successfully taught her children the importance of doing what they feel is right.
"They grew up with every police officer in the city knowing who they were, so they've got a pretty good sense of right and wrong," she says. "Most important, I think, with the kids, is to always be honest with everybody else as well as themselves. And in that respect, to do what is fullfilling to them."
She adds, "My kids think a lot of me and respect me and they don't shy away from saying that they love me. I think that's just about as much as you can ask."
Family has always been a priority for Cleveland, though the focus has shifted over the years from her children to her grandchildren.
"The priority has maybe changed a little bit, because when I started working it was to provide for my children. I don't have to do that now. Though they're still in the back of my mind, I can start doing some things that I want to do."
It may not be anything big, she says, and it may involve her family, but every decision she makes is no longer based on them.
Though she believes that everyone has small regrets, she says she has no big ones. "Overall I had a pretty good variety of things happen to me, but nothing bad," she says. "I've been fortunate in that respect."
Cleveland has lost both parents. Her father died in 1980.
"That was hard on everybody. He was a person who was very full of life. He was only 58 when he died - that's the same age I am now."
Her mother died three years ago.
"That was very hard. She was a crusty old lady," she says fondly, "but she was the centre of my family."
Cleveland has learned that sometimes life doesn't turn out quite the way you want it to, but it's important to work hard and to be honest.
"That's something I've always tried to do," she says.
It comes down to treating others the way you want to be treated in return.
"You have to be honest, you've got to do the best you can, and you cannot beat yourself up when it doesn't work out," she says. "You've just got to take the positive out of it and keep going."
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