WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR?
50 YEARS, 50 VOICES
Bill Krysak
Bill was born in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan and lived in a few small towns in Saskatchewan before moving with his family to Warner, Alberta in 1971. He began his career as a security officer at the University of Lethbridge in April of 1982. He was then promoted to the Investigations Officer position and later became the first Security Supervisor. Bill was the first Fire Safety Officer on campus where he received an award for his work with the Lethbridge Fire Department. After 30.5 years, Bill retired in 2012 as the Manager of Security Services for the University.
Bill describes how the experience of working in the Security Department enabled the careers of staff in their future policing endeavours.
The full audio interview will be made available online in late 2017. For more information please contact the University of Lethbridge Archives. (mike.perry@uleth.ca)
(MP: Mike Perry, Interviewer)
MP: Students, the last thing I want to talk to you about. You must have gotten to know a lot of students.
BK: A lot of students, yes. As I said before, nowadays you see them and say hi to them and just amazed that they remember ...
MP: You.
BK: Yes.
MP: And you remember them.
BK: I remember them.
MP: You remember the face.
BK: Exactly. But one other thing besides the students, I’d like to say, is the staff that we had, working with them. We had a lot of staff leave us and go into a policing enforcement area. Whether it be the police or the jail or the sheriffs, RCMP, you know, a lot of them went out there. And we had, I had a lot of compliments from agencies saying the University of Lethbridge was a great training ground for these people. It provided them the ability to do their note taking and do their investigations and get to know the thing, the life experience kind of thing that these agencies were looking for.
MP: Their observations skills.
BK: Exactly.
MP: Oh that must have been ... made you feel good about that.
BK: Alone, the city police here in Lethbridge, I can count at least six or seven people that left here and are gone to the city police.
MP: Is that right? Oh, I didn’t know that.
BK: One of my first guys that left us, mind you I was still working patrols at that time, him and I were on patrols, and this is going back to ’85 - '86. He left us and he went to Toronto Metro Police, where he’s still a police officer.
MP: A police officer there?
BK: Yes. In my life, and I’ve said it to more than one person, I’ve always called this my University. This is my University because thinking back when I started the University was only 15 years old. I never really thought about that until this, the '50 Voices' came up. Only 15 years old, it was an infant at that time, you know? And to spend thirty and a half years ... I retired when the University was 45 and now we’re hitting 50. So, just being here, working with staff, faculty, students. It was just a really good time. I really enjoyed myself.
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