Peter Pereversoff almost didn’t take the call from the Governor General’s office.
“I was just washing up after work, and the phone rang,” he recalls. “I looked at the call display, and it looked like a telemarketing phone number. I wasn’t going to answer it.”
Even when the woman at the other end of the line said she was from the Governor General’s office, he wasn’t convinced.
“I still wasn’t sure,” he says. “And then all the paperwork started coming in, and it started getting more exciting.”
It was no hoax: Pereversoff was one of 41 nominees from across BC to receive the Governor General’s award for their dedicated and outstanding commitment to volunteering in their community.
Pereversoff won the Sovereign Medal for Volunteers for his 11 years of volunteering for the Tarrys Fire Department, a rural station between Nelson and Castlegar.
On Sept. 6, he attended a ceremony in Victoria to receive his medal from the province’s Lieutenant-Governor.
Pereversoff said he was thrilled to receive the honour. He says he started volunteering for the fire department after driving his sons to calls when they were younger. He says being self-employed means having the flexibility to respond to calls.
“I spend a lot of time being available,” he says. “I work out of home, so if my radio goes off, I’m gone.
“If we get a call during the day, usually I’m the only one in the area, so I jump in my own car and head straight to the scene.”
Often handing two or three calls a week on a busy highway means he sees both positive and negative outcomes from his volunteering.
“If you help somebody and it’s a good outcome, it makes you feel good,” he says.
He says he enjoys working with all his fellow volunteers, whom he calls “excellent.” And while the governor general’s recognition is nice, he says he gets rewarded every day.
“I’m not in this for the award,” says the self-employed auto mechanic. “And I’ve lost a few customers over the years, by leaving them in my shop.
“But then a lot of them realize what I do and they come back and they thank me. And that’s the most rewarding thing of all.”