County’s Dan Metcalfe named Great Lakes Water Safety Consortium’s 2026 Volunteer of the Year

Dan Metcalfe, the County of Essex’s Emergency Measures Coordinator, has been named the 2026 Volunteer of the Year by the Great Lakes Water Safety Consortium (GLWSC). 

Metcalfe received the surprise honour last week at the GLWSC’s conference in South Haven, Michigan. Metcalfe was attending along with numerous other Ontario leaders in water safety and drowning prevention. 

The GLWSC is a growing non-profit organization that brings together more than 1,000 drowning-prevention experts and water-safety advocates in the Great Lakes Region, from both Ontario, Canada and the United States. 

“Dan is a volunteer extraordinaire,” said County of Essex Warden Hilda MacDonald. “No one here knows more about water safety, or advocates for it more relentlessly, than Dan. Our County is a safer place to live, and our surrounding waters so much safer to enjoy, because of him. Congratulations, Dan, on this richly deserved award!” 

Metcalfe has been rigorously involved in public safety for more than 30 years. 

He spent 25 years as a local Paramedic and has experience as a Base Hospital BLS Coordinator & Instructor and in injury prevention with the WRH P.A.R.T.Y Program, Progressive Agriculture Farm Safety Day, and the Safety Village. What’s more, Metcalfe has volunteered with the Canadian Coast Guard Auxiliary on the Western Basin of Lake Erie for 11 years, and has been a responder, planner and exercise designer for the Border Sentinel Marine SAR exercise on the Detroit River since 2015. 

As Emergency Measures Coordinator and Community Emergency Management Coordinator for the County of Essex for 11 years, Metcalfe has served as lead coordinator in this area for the Windsor-Essex County Drowning Prevention and Water Safety Coalition, and this year was lead coordinator for Progressive Agriculture Safety Day. 

On top of all that, Metcalfe has volunteered in the past with the Canadian Red Cross for more than a decade, is a current IMS/ICS Instructor/Facilitator for MEPR/Emergency Measures Ontario (St. Clair Sector), and he is a promoter and facilitator of First Responder Interoperability in Communications with our international cross-border partners. 

“This honour was very unexpected,” Metcalfe said, “and it’s a great testament to all the great work of our local Windsor-Essex County Drowning Prevention and Water Safety Coalition members, our County of Essex summer students in Emergency Management, and many other partner agencies and volunteers. Having such unflagging support from Essex-Windsor EMS and the County of Essex for well over a decade means the world to promote drowning prevention, boating safety and water safety to the citizens or Windsor and Essex County."