Doing right in facing danger

LAUREN KRAMER

When Dean Seskin steps up to receive the Chief Constable Certificate of Merit in January, the 20-year-old student from Richmond may well be feeling embarrassed. “I didn’t do anything out of the ordinary to deserve the award,” he insisted. “What I did was a normal act – it just seemed huge because of the situation that surrounded it.”

Seskin is referring to the Stanley Cup riots in 2011, when he intervened to assist Robert MacKay, a local chef who was being beaten up by a mob of 15 assailants. Ten minutes earlier, Mackay had attempted to stop the mob from looting the Bay in downtown Vancouver.

“People were surrounding me, throwing punches and kicking me,” MacKay recalled. “I couldn’t even open my eyes because they were full of pepper spray.”

Seskin was walking along Georgia Street, trying to get to a train station when he heard the sound of breaking windows at the Bay. He saw MacKay try to stop the looting and, moments later, be forced to the ground and attacked. Seskin and another man, Chris McLelland, forced their way through the crowd to rescue MacKay.

“I could see what was going to happen,” Seskin said of witnessing the events, “and realized I needed to get in there.”

A video posted on YouTube shows Seskin in a yellow Canucks jersey, as he and McLelland pull people off MacKay. “I tried to make a shield around him because he had been sprayed by mace and couldn’t protect himself,” Seskin explained. They managed to drag him to safety and stayed with MacKay until his girlfriend arrived on the scene.

Seskin went home and informed his father Darrel that he had helped a guy who was hurt and who had been sprayed with mace. A couple of days later, his dad called to let him know he was on YouTube and that the video had gone viral.

“He never told me exactly what he’d done, just that he’d helped someone,” Darrel Seskin said. “When I saw it on YouTube, I realized exactly what he’d done. I felt super proud that my son had made the right decision. But it could have turned out differently and incredibly dangerously for him – so I was relieved that he had done good, but had emerged unscathed as well.”

MacKay, who will also receive the Certificate of Merit on Jan. 9, said Seskin and McLelland “were my heroes.” “Dean definitely deserves this award, because his intervention that day was extraordinary. He jumped in knowing full well what was happening and that he was putting himself at risk.”

The award is given by the Vancouver Police board to a citizen when, on their own initiative and in the face of actual or anticipated danger, they have assisted the police in preventing a crime or making a life-saving attempt.

“It’s the highest award for civilian bravery,” said Constable Brian Montague, media-relations officer for the VPD. Seskin, MacKay and 25 others will receive the certificate for their various roles during the riots.

Seskin’s story appeared on TV and in the newspapers, coverage he still finds a bit bizarre and over the top. “It’s sickening that what I did is being called heroic,” he told the Richmond News. “If other people in the crowd had put down their phones and helped, it might have been different. What I did should be normal.”

Seskin said that many people did do good deeds during the riot, and that his was singled out because it happened to have been photographed and recorded. “I don’t feel like I did something heroic. It humbles me to know I helped someone and I’m glad that my first reaction was to help someone, not to run away. I was brought up to believe that’s how I should behave, and I am reassured that I did the right thing, and that everything my parents had taught me and schools had taught me, was right.”

His parents, Darrel and Shana Seskin, are proud as can be and the news of the award was on Darrel’s Facebook page immediately, much to Dean’s chagrin. “My parents are excited and they wanted to let people know,” he said. “But I didn’t really want others to find out. I don’t need other people to see me getting an award. It’s a personal thing and I don’t need the whole world to clap for me.”

That modesty speaks volumes about Dean, explained his father. “I’m very proud he’s getting the award but, again, there are a lot of people that did a lot of good things that day. The way he has handled all the publicity and attention that his act generated, now that speaks volumes about what kind of character he is.”

Lauren Kramer is an award-winning writer in Richmond. Read her work at laurenkramer.net.

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