Student awarded for act of bravery

By Quinn Damery

dame0013@algonquincollege.com

First-year police foundations student Joel Kelford was presented with an OPP Commissioner’s Citation for Bravery Nov. 23 for his role in the rescue of two Mississauga-area men from drowning after their canoe tipped.

On the evening of May 17, Kelford’s girlfriend, Jenna McCrae, coerced him into going for a walk near her house at Round Lake near Pembroke. Alerted by screams in the distance, the couple headed for the shoreline.

The water was choppy with high waves, which Kelford said made it difficult to see the boaters. They thought they could see three figures stranded in the middle of a horseshoe-shaped inlet, 200 meters from shore.

“It wasn’t much of a choice in my mind to go out there . . . I just did it,” said Kelford.

Kelford found a boat and oars in a nearby yard and managed to launch it into the water by himself. After a quick rowing lesson from McCrae, Kelford directed the boat out to the stranded boaters. Once they got closer, they could see it was two men clinging to luggage and a dog swimming for shore.

At the same time, Dennis Laurin was cooking dinner at his home when he noticed figures floating in the water. He quickly launched his kayak and began paddling out to them.

 “The water was still pretty frigid because the ice would’ve melted only a couple of weeks earlier, so the risk of hypothermia was pretty high,” said Kelford. “When we finally got to the guys they were pale, pale. So you know it had pretty much started to set in.”

Kelford estimates the men were in the water anywhere from 20-45 minutes.

Laurin had brought children’s lifejackets for the men to use, and managed to manoeuvre one of the drifting men onto the bow of his kayak. He then began paddling for shore.

Kelford and McCrae reached the second man, who was clinging to a backpack. Kelford hauled the man into the boat. Kelford tried to get the man to remove his sweater but he could only get it unzipped.

“I was making jokes with him, trying to keep him calm,” said Kelford.

The couple was waved to shore by Laurin’s wife.

The night of the rescue, an officer taking statements from Kelford and McCrae mentioned that he would put their name in for a citation. More concerned about the well-being of the two boaters (both were in the hospital at the time), Kelford forgot about the award until he received a letter in the mail a few months ago.

“[We were] pretty surprised. We didn’t think we would get this much recognition for it,” said Kelford.

 On Nov. 24, Kelford, along with McCrae and Laurin, received the OPP Commissioner’s Citation for Bravery for their part in the rescue.

Though he has had to tell the story “a couple of hundred times,” Kelford is modest, even a bit bashful, but it’s hard to hide that helping people just seems to be in his nature.

Kelford was 16 and working in a bowling alley in Pembroke when he decided to join the military reserves.

“[I] just wanted to do something more significant, to influence something. Same reason I want to become a police officer: I want to help the community and actually change things,” said Kelford.