By Charlie Turner, Kawartha Zone patroller and CSP Life Member No. 39 (charlie.turner@skipatrol.ca)
A.P. Crawford is a definite builder of the CSP. She has and continues to contribute in a major way at the zone, division and national levels of the CSP, often at the same time. Mostly she works in the background but some of us do know what she has done.
She has been an AFA instructor since 1977 and still patrols with one of her original students! She was CPR coordinator in the CSP Kawartha Zone long before CPR was part of CSP training and has instructed first aid almost every year of her career. She designed and executed the zone’s version of returning patrollers’ weekend courses, morphing them to meet ever-changing national requirements and as coordinator, mentored successors while remaining as backup. She is a long-standing instructor trainer and also held the position of director of first aid training in the zone for many years, onboarding multiple successive vice-presidents of education.
Other roles held at the zone level include zone secretary, zone registrar, editor of the zone’s print newsletter Triangular Topics, key member of the 2009 national annual conference organizing committee for the conference held in Oshawa, and a key player in producing the zone’s 40th anniversary history book. And she continues to be a main player in the ski swaps as she has done since the inception of the zone swap multiple decades ago. Plus, she puts her writing talents to use as author of countless awards nominations at all levels on behalf of her patrol and the zone.
She joined the CSP Ontario Division executive in 1982 as secretary and the following year was appointed vice-president of administration, where she ensured at least monthly communication with all of the zone presidents. Since this was long before the advent of the internet, she says her telephone bills were horrendous! She was also part of the division executive group charged with providing CSP training for patrollers in the then-new Muskoka Zone until such time as that zone had its own first-aid instructing team. While she was with the division, she also attended the Nordic workshop at Dorset and became certified as a Nordic patroller. Using those skills, she participated as part of the division support group for the Kawartha Nordic Tour and the Muskoka Loppet, for many years.
At the national level, AP joined the communications team as editor of SWEEP in 1998 and managed its publication for the duration of its course. She has authored articles for various publications, copy-edited and reviewed text for the Sk-E Patrolling News and other pieces. Under the title of national periodicals editor and production manager she has edited (and ghost written) 5/5 since its inception. She also managed production of other CSP communication documents for outside sources including the Operators’ Communique. Her command of English is second to none.
AP worked with the TransCanada Trail Relay 2000 team for promotion and publicity of the CSP’s participation as water carrier team medical services support. She was an active participant in the relay for a branch in south-western Ontario, and again with the main relay moving through CSP Kawartha Zone where the zone had an active and visible presence east of Toronto.
When in attendance at the national annual conference (NAC), AP acted as on-site support for the national office. Her career as a senior municipal administrator (including early days as council recording secretary) have benefitted the CSP in untold ways. Around 2006 she was drafted in to record minutes at the NAC zone presidents’ meeting (more like surrounded in the hall with no escape route!) and performed that function for the years she was present, working with the moderators. In 2016 at the Big White NAC she was drafted to assist with taking minutes for the national annual general meeting (AGM). The following three years she acted as recording secretary for the AGM and prepared minutes for the corporate secretary. In 2020 she was a member of the virtual AGM organizing committee struck due to pandemic restrictions on in-person meetings, and served as the recording secretary for that meeting, and for every virtual AGM since, including this year.
AP has also had the opportunity to patrol at both of the Winter Olympic Games held in Canada and is the proud owner of a set of pink sleeves from Calgary ’88 (on-snow patroller at the ski jumps at Canada Olympic Park) and a blue uniform from Vancouver in 2010 (spectator medical services at Pacific Coliseum).
Away from the paperwork, AP also happens to be an accomplished needlework artist and a number of us have special presentation pieces hanging on our walls. She also keeps our uniforms in good repair.
AP is currently working on year 49 of service in the CSP. She is the holder of National Appreciation Award No. 644, Canadian Ski Patroller Award No. 733, was made CSP Kawartha Zone Life Member No. 11 in 2013, and CSP Ontario Division Life Member No. 20 in 2021. To this list we now add CSP Life Member No. 87.
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