CANADA COURIER: Law and order in Winnipeg (12/20/98)

CANADA COURIER

by Christopher Guly

Law and order in Winnipeg

November 22 was a grey day for Winnipeggers; greyer for Jack Ewatski. That day the city played host to the championship game of the Canadian Football League, which didn't include Winnipeg's Blue Bombers. Joining the tens of thousands of football fans in the Winnipeg Stadium was Mr. Ewatski, who likely wished he were out there on the field officiating the Grey Cup game between the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and the Calgary Stampeders. For the past seven years, he had been one of 40 on-field CFL officials. But, these days, another duty calls for Mr. Ewatski, who is now officiating at a game with far greater consequences than a Sunday afternoon football game.

As of November 2, the 46-year-old beat out over 30 candidates to became chief of the Winnipeg Police Service, the first "non-Anglo-Saxon" boss the 125-year-old city has ever had.

Two ethnic groups in Winnipeg can claim history in the making with Mr. Ewatski's promotion in the force. His father, John, claims Ukrainian descent. His mother, Joyce, is of Polish extraction. Growing up in the city's multicultural North End offered "Jackie" Joseph Ewatski glimpses of both cultures.

He attended Polish-speaking St. John Cantius Roman Catholic Church, located across the street from the family home, and went to Holy Ghost School. Mr. Ewatski was raised in a family that observed the Christmas Eve meatless dishes and the Easter custom of blessing food baskets. Though he and his wife, Marcie, didn't follow suit in strongly maintaining those traditions in raising their three now-grown children and Mr. Ewatski admits the Ukrainian words he can speak "couldn't be repeated" in this publication, he is proud of his roots, he says.

"The way I view people of the heritage is that they're hard workers, very low key but out there working and giving 100 percent effort all the time," explains Chief Ewatski. "And I think that's something that was instilled in me with my parents, the rest of my family, the people we associated with growing up as kids - people working in the North End, the work ethic involved with Eastern Europeans."

Indeed, the work ethic is strong in the Ewatski (rendered as Ewashkiw by one of Mr. Ewatski's uncles in Edmonton) family. His father, now 74, worked for the Canadian Pacific Railway for years. So did John's father, his brother and two of his sons, as well as Jack himself, for a spell.

Working on the railroad wasn't in Mr. Ewatski's blood, though. He (like this writer) wanted to become a bus driver. As a boy growing up on Burrows Avenue, a family friend would take young Jack along with him on his bus route.

Mr. Ewatski dropped the idea of getting hired by Winnipeg Transit and turned his sights on broadcasting. After spending a couple of years at the all-boys Catholic St. Paul's High School, Mr. Ewatski switched to a technical vocational secondary school where he studied television broadcasting and later did a stint as a TV cameraman for a local Winnipeg station.

But that was almost 30 years ago when there weren't many jobs in the city for someone with those qualifications. What's more, Mr. Ewatski was about to start a family and needed to pull in a substantial income. He drove a cab for a while, but the CPR seemed like a good bet. "The railroad had always been good to our family and I thought I'd start working there and keep my eye out for other things," he recalls.

Police work was of interest to him and that interest peaked one night, which he still remembers.

"I was lying under a boxcar doing some welding, the sparks were coming down and I got burned a few times and I said, 'This is ridiculous. I'm not going to do this for the rest of my life,'" says Mr. Ewatski. "It was time to make a move with a new family being born. Six weeks to the day I applied I was walking the beat."

A new Ewatski family tradition was born in the process. His two brothers, out of five siblings, are involved in police work. Jamie, the younger at 40, is a sergeant with the Edmonton's SWAT team. Mike, 51, works as a civilian member for the Winnipeg Police Service's dispatch unit. And Mr. Ewatski's twins Jess and Josh, both 25, (he has another daughter, Tracy, 25) are thinking about joining the Winnipeg force. Certainly, their dad must be an inspiration. Having marked his 25th anniversary as a Winnipeg police officer in September, Mr. Ewatski has gone from constable, detective and deputy chief to the city's top cop.

Don't call him cop, though.

"I don't like the term," he says. "I don't even like calling us police officers. Under the Criminal Code, we're classified as peace officers and that's what our job is: to create and maintain peace in the community." That goal is a challenging one for the chief. Not long ago, Winnipeg, with a population of 639,600, was considered the homicide capital (on a per capita basis) in Canada. It no longer is, he says. But convincing Winnipeggers of that is another matter.

"I think we've gotten a bad rap because we do have street gangs and a certain amount of street crime so that the citizens of our city believe very strongly that some streets of the city are very unsafe to walk on. It's not as bad as people think, and the perception is that it's very bad." In setting zero tolerance for street gangs, the Winnipeg Police Service has hired a coordinator to work with various agencies to deter kids from joining them. The formation of urban sports camps is another way for would-be delinquents to vent their energies in more suitable recreational pursuits.

Chief Ewatski has also inherited a somewhat volatile force of 1,206 officers. While serving as acting chief, Mr. Ewatski suspended one of his colleagues without pay in October pending the officer's criminal assault trial. Over 100 officers protested by calling in sick in what became known as the "blue flu." An arbitrator ordered Const. Grant Eakin back to work. Things have since settled down. Somewhat.

The rubber-chicken circuit has already begun as Mr. Ewatski is in demand to make personal appearances. Undoubtedly, the pressure will be on from both the Polish and Ukrainian communities - the latter of which already has his involvement.

Chief Ewatski has served on the advisory board of the Ukrainian Catholic Holy Family Nursing Home in the city's North End for almost three years. But his job might be somewhat easier considering he appears to have a good working relationship with the city's newly elected mayor, 41-year-old Glen Murray.

Mr. Murray, a veteran city councilor, made newspaper headlines as the first openly gay mayor in Canada when he was swept to office a few days before Mr. Ewatski became chief. Mayor Murray also claims Ukrainian roots from his mother's side of the family.

Mr. Ewatski's sense of commitment will also make overseeing the men and women who do one of the most dangerous jobs in the world more manageable. He says he tells his officers, "Commit yourself to excellence in everything you do. Whether it would be writing a report, dealing with the public or a suspect. Do it in a manner that's excellent." His CFL experience has also come in handy when understanding the difficulties involved in policing.

"It's almost like officiating," says Mr. Ewatski. "You have to be able to say, 'There's an infraction or there's somebody breaking the law,' that they meet the criteria of a charge and make a decision based on that. The people working on the streets in police work have to make split-second decisions based on information that is presented to them very quickly."

"The unfortunate thing is that those decisions are always subject to review and criticism later by people who have time to evaluate and take an objective look in comfortable surroundings. So the job is difficult in that regard," he notes. Everyone wants to be an armchair quarterback. Few get to play in the Grey Cup.

Chief Ewatski ended up winning his own.

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