New Toronto Fire Chief Jim Jessop follows father’s footsteps [Video]

Thirty-five years after a devastating fire roared through a Parliament Street rooming house two days before Christmas, Deputy Fire Chief Jim Jessop pulls up a grainy photo of the blaze on his phone.

“That is my father,” he says, pointing to the firefighter scaling the fully-engulfed building as smoke billows out.

“The picture shows exactly the conditions the firefighters met that evening … knowing that there were people in behind those windows.”

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The fire would go down as one of the deadliest in Toronto’s history, a poignant memory for Jessop – who knew he wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps from as young as five or six years old.

“The people that were my heroes growing up were not on Saturday morning cartoons,” he told CTV News Toronto on Monday. “They were the firefighters on my father’s truck.”

Jessop joined Toronto Fire and after taking on leadership roles outside …