If your life is lacking action this winter, latch onto the memoir of former Ontario Provincial Police officer Andrew Maksymchuk.
His highly readable latest book, TRU – Tactics and Rescue Unit: The Last Resort in Policing, describes his adventures as a pioneering member of Ontario’s elite unit created to deal with hostage takings, cop-killers and other extreme criminal events.
Follow him from a holiday on a P.E.I beach to the rigorous military training of TRU recruits – training that included a harsh winter survival course in the wilds of northern Ontario.
He takes the reader on a personal journey through the selection process and initial training with military forces on a variety of Canadian Forces bases.
Laugh along with Maksymchuk’s hilarious description of searching for a dead rabbit for his dinner, enjoy his recounting of the camaraderie that developed among the unit members and shed a tear over the loss of a young police officer to a serial criminal.
Share too in the breathless excitement of the chase as TRU members track criminals through inhospitable terrain.
Maksymchuk covers his eight-year association with the elite unit (including his stint as the first full-time co-ordinator) in intimate detail.
From its humble beginnings in 1975 as a response an incident that showed police were ill-prepared, Ontario’s TRU developed into one of North America’s top high-risk police units.
Maksymchuk says the unit was created following “a poorly handled incident in London, Ont. where two police officers were taken hostage and fired upon with their own weapons while trying to escape.”
In 1977, this farm boy from Grindrod became co-ordinator of all OPP TRU teams in Ontario.
Maksymchuk says the OPP has police Emergency Response Teams (ERT) as do many municipal police services, and the RCMP in the provinces in which they provide provincial police services.
“But TRU is trained to a higher degree of response,” he says, pointing out Ontario has three nuclear facilities, the largest airport, the highest population density, two capital cities, shipping lanes, embassies and residences of foreign diplomats. TRU had to be trained to thwart terrorism on aircraft, ships, inside nuclear plants, trains, all types of buildings and buses.”
One full chapter of Maksymchuk’s book describes his first major task as leader of a TRU team in 1977. The assignment was to capture a male individual believed to be responsible for the shooting death of a police sergeant.
“In the chapter, I criticize the eventual handling of the convicted killer by the parole board and use as an example the occurrence in Vernon where Eric Fish, convicted of a murder in 1984, walked away from a Halfway House and murdered two people in the local community within six weeks,” he says.
This is Maksymchuk’s second book, taking up where From Muskeg to Murder left off.
In his first memoir, Maksymchuk begins by looking at the epic struggles and enormous challenges his ancestors faced as they struggled to eke out a living in the oppressive regime of 19th century Ukraine.
The family moved to Canada and Maksymchuk, born in 1942, was raised on a farm in Grindrod and was schooled in nearby Enderby.
“I attended Grade 13 at Salmon Arm Secondary High School the first year it was offered as first year university,” he says. “I was living in Vernon in 1963 and decided to go on a cross-Canada automobile trip with a friend.”
The two ended up broke in Hamilton, Ont. and went to work at the Firestone Tire Company. Wanting more from life, Maksymchuk applied to the Ontario Provincial Police, was accepted in 1964 and posted to Kenora, Ont., a small community near the Ontario/Manitoba border.
The author and his wife, Myra, retired to Vernon in 1994. Both of the couple’s children are police officers – son, Wade is with the Greater Sudbury Police Service, and daughter, Lesa is a sgt. major with the OPP.
Both of Maksymchuk’s books are available at Hidden Gems Bookstore on Alexander Street and the author will be on location for a book-signing from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday, Jan. 13.