Mother, community proud of boy's humble heroics
- Andréa Ledding | May 18, 2016
“Oh, you must be looking for Harvey the Hero,” said the secretary at Pelican Narrows’ Opawikoscikan School, when EFN phoned to track down Mary Jane Michel.
Harvey Dorian’s mother, Mary Jane Michel, teaches at Opawikoscikan School and has been handling national media calls for over a week now. In fact she says it’s been almost overwhelming, the amount of attention coming his way. The Pelican Narrows 10-year-old boy, now known to his community as “Harvey the Hero,” saved a three-year-old from drowning in a ditch at the end of April.
“He's downplaying everything — for him it's forgotten, but I’m very proud and very happy,” said Mary Jane. Harvey is the youngest of six kids, and all of his siblings are in their 20’s and 30’s, so he was walking over to an older brother’s house around 5 p.m. when he came upon a car in the ditch.
Not your typical car-in-a-ditch scenario, this was an upside-down plastic red and yellow toddler car driven by a three-year-old who had reputedly been off the bottle, but was still a ways away from being a legal driver. The pre-school driver was in over his head. Without thinking about it, Harvey waded in, having two nephews of his own who are one and five.
“He was drowning and I had to go save him,” Harvey said, noting the water level was up to his own eyes so the toddler in the car didn’t have much of a chance. He grabbed him and pulled him out, managing to get only his shoes wet. The boys sat and panted by the water-filled ditch, and then another woman arrived on the scene, asking what had happened. Harvey told her, and then calmly went home to change his wet shoes as the woman offered to return the toddler home. He told his mother what had happened as well, but she was quite busy and didn’t fully absorb the tale.
In fact, Mary Jane wasn’t really aware until she found a post in a private group on Facebook she uses to track down what her youngest son might be up to, if he’s out past curfew, describing him as a typical rough-and-tumble boy who likes biking, playing hockey, and staying active. From the post, she learned Harvey had saved a life and was being commended.
She commented on the post, which was from the woman who had been second on the scene and returned the toddler home after Harvey’s heroics. The woman quoted Harvey as saying he “almost had a heart attack” at the time, probably from all the adrenaline!
The story then made its way around the community, and eventually the media picked up on it, too. The ditch has since been drained, to prevent any further need of heroics.
The whole community is proud of Heroic Harvey, and his mother Mary Jane is happy he took action how and when he did.
“I’m just happy and proud of him. You hear a lot of negativity about First Nations communities and I think this is a very good story,” she said.
Kids saving kids — it doesn’t get much better than that.
“I tell him to emulate his older brothers, be respectful, and work hard,” noted Mary Jane. “He’s polite and well-mannered to me because that’s what I’ve taught him. People who don’t even know him are talking to him on the street, praising him for saving a life. That little boy is still in diapers, he averted something that could have been very tragic if he wasn’t there.”
As for Harvey, he just has a one word reply about how it felt to save the younger child’s life.
“Good.”