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Life hasn’t been easy for Mike Irwin, but he says that hasn’t changed his attitude on life.
The retired police officer and writer lost his father, also a police officer, after a deadly encounter with an armed suspect. Irwin himself was in his teens at the time and says during his high school years, he worked four jobs to support himself, his mother, and three other siblings. In these years, Irwin said he was fortunate to have teachers that understood what he was going through. He remembers that they would make accommodations for him as he pursued his dream of becoming a police officer like his father. He joined the Toronto Metropolitan Police Force in the ’70s, married, and had a daughter. Then when he was 25, in pursuit of a suspect, a fall crushed both his kneecaps, rendering him unable to walk.