Niagara-on-the-Lake fire chief Nick Ruller has been a rockstar during his tenure at the top, overseeing the town's volunteer brigade.

Dare we say, he's been the Neil Peart, the Wayne Gretzky, the James Bond of NOTL fire services.

As a senior manager and leader who worked to improve and modernize the fire service, he has shown that he's sharp, sensible, organized, capable and does what he thinks is best for our town.

He has led NOTL through a global pandemic, improved response time to fires and kept volunteer firefighters top of mind in demanding quality fire halls and breathing apparatuses. He rarely misses a council meeting and has been known to show up even when he's on vacation.

He's also always been very responsive and transparent to requests for information. Typically he has an answer back in short order and our readers greatly benefit from that.

There's a long list of areas in which the town is better off, thanks to Ruller. And despite all of his hard work and long hours, the only thing we have known him to complain about was having to go to a call involving a local person in distress — because he's grown up with the people in our community and knows many of them by name.

It's sad to see him go but we wish him the best moving to his new position in Brampton as platoon chief.

Go get 'em.

Looking to the future, we hope some of our own firefighters are considered for the chief's role, if they are interested. Several of them, like deputy chief Jay Plato, have learned under Ruller and have been instrumental in helping him run the service.

If it's right, we'd love to see this position go to a dedicated member of the NOTL fire service. Because, really, they're all rock stars.