For a kid who grew up in Canada’s largest city, moving to a small town in northern Ontario was “a culture shock.”
Upholding the law in an unfamiliar place just added to the challenge for a 21-year-old Shawn Hewlett.
“In Toronto, there were probably more people in a square block in apartments than there were in all of Kapuskasing,” Hewlett said.
He was a constable in Kapuskasing from 1985 to 1989. During his time there, he was seconded to other areas of northern Ontario that had their own problems, including Fort Albany First Nation. It was a dry territory, but people found ways to smuggle booze to the fly-in reserve. One of Hewlett’s jobs was to search the planes.
Being one of few officers in the area helped equip Hewlett with the skills he would need during his 33-year career in policing.
“I definitely learned how to talk to people. If you treat people poorly, you’ll be treated poorly. You’re outnumbered,” he said. “I’ve always maintained that: Treat people how you want to be treated.”
It’s a philosophy he carried with him to Orillia, where he joined the former municipal force in 1989. When the OPP came to town in 1996, he became acting sergeant before being promoted to sergeant.
In 2009, he went to the Huronia West detachment, where he worked as a staff sergeant until 2013, when he returned to Orillia to serve in the same capacity.
Five years later, he is hanging up his hat.
Hewlett, 54, will retire at the end of May.
“One of the biggest things I’m going to miss is the people here. We spend so much time together. It becomes part of you,” Hewlett told OrilliaMatters during an interview in his office at the Peter Street detachment, where he oversees more than 100 staff and civilian members of the force.
He has certainly left his mark on Orillia and area.
He has received two Commissioner’s Citations for Live Saving.
Hewlett was the first on the scene when three snowmobilers went through the Lake Simcoe ice off of Woodland Drive. He was soon joined by a paramedic.
“I said to him, ‘It’s you and me. We’ve got to go,’” Hewlett recalled.
He rescued the first snowmobiler he came across. He got the second one to shore, but that person died at the scene. The third had died before Hewlett arrived on scene.
It’s one of the calls he will never forget.
“You always think about it: What could we have done differently? If we went to the second guy first, could we have saved him, too?” he said. “I remember him yelling, ‘Help! Help! Help!’ I yelled back, ‘Hold on, buddy. We’re coming.’ And then (the man’s yelling) just stopped.”
He feels he made the right decision that night, but policing can often leave officers thinking about the ‘what-ifs.’
Quick work by Hewlett and his colleagues led to a happier outcome when they responded to the report of a plane that had overturned on Lake Simcoe between Strawberry Island the Ramara Township shore. Two people were inside the small plane and were quickly running out of air.
“We tried to get the doors open, but to no avail,” Hewlett said.
Emergency responders hauled the upside-down plane to shore using a boat, and both occupants were saved.
While he was recognized by the commissioner for both of those rescues, it was never about the accolades for Hewlett. A career in emergency services seemed a given. His dad was a platoon chief with the Toronto fire department.
“He pushed me to the policing field and that’s the way my career path went,” Hewlett said.
It was a choice that gave him more experience than he could have imagined: detective, motorcycle officer, marine officer, breath technician.
Over the years, he has seen the force and its equipment evolve.
In his 19 years as a breath technician, he worked with four different machines. The radio system has also improved. “We went from, basically, two cups and a string to the system we have now.” And, he has had three types of guns in his holster: first, a .38 Special bull barrel, followed by a Sig Sauer .40-calibre and, now, a Glock M17.
All of the changes have been necessary for police to keep up with the criminals.
“If they get ahead, they win the game,” Hewlett said.
His career has largely been a rewarding one, but it comes with the cost of remembering the worst.
For Hewlett, it was the death scenes.
“Those aren’t the highlight events in anyone’s career, but they’re the ones you remember,” he said.
Hewlett was the lead investigator of an accident on a ski hill, where a 16-year-old was killed after being hit in the head by another skier.
“That was such a traumatic experience for many people,” Hewlett said, recalling the bloody scene. “Some ski instructors resigned.”
He has also seen some examples of bad parenting. A dad who was driving while drunk on Rama Road crashed his vehicle. His infant child was ejected from the car, landed in a snowbank and was, incredibly, not injured. It’s one of the reasons Hewlett is passionate about taking drunk drivers off the road.
“We’re not out there to screw people’s lives up,” he said. “I don’t make people drive impaired, or steal, but we have to deal with it.”
With retirement coming up, Hewlett isn’t ruling out some type of part-time work, but he is looking forward to being able to give more time to the local Shriners, a group he joined in 1996.
A Shriners convention was in Toronto in the 1970s, and Hewlett’s dad took him to watch the parade. Across the street was the Hospital for Sick Children. As the parade passed, Hewlett asked his dad what it was all about.
“He pointed to the kids across the street,” Hewlett recalled. “So, I knew, even as a kid, I wanted to do that.”
He was president of the Orillia club in 2001. He currently holds the title of high priest and prophet with the Shriners’ Rameses divan and, if all goes well, will move into the leading role of potentate in 2021.
The experience has been impactful on both his personal and work lives.
“It gives me a different perspective of what I do here. If you were in their circumstances, maybe you’d have the same problem,” he said.
“When you go to the hospitals and see the kids who are being helped, you realize Shriners are leaders.”
Looking back on more than three decades of policing, Hewlett feels fortunate as he gets ready to turn in his badge.
“It’s been a great ride.”
