The sky’s the limit for this year’s winner of the Governor General’s Academic Medal, said Lake City Secondary principal Gregg Gaylord.
“Patrick Kniec is a very well-rounded student,” Gaylord said Wednesday as he awarded Patrick the medal at the school. “He had 95.4 per cent overall for his Grade 11 and 12 courses.”
Patrick graduated in June and told the Tribune he is pursuing a Bachelor of Commerce degree at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, beginning in September.
“If that all goes well and I enjoy it then I’ll go into accounting and then move my way up and become a chief financial officer — maybe even a CEO one day,” he said. “Who knows? That’s my dream.”
When asked if he loves math and numbers, without hesitation Patrick smiled and said “it just comes easy to me.”
“I don’t want to be a minnow in the world, I want to be someone,” he added.
The oldest of three boys, Patrick’s family moved from the Lower Mainland when he was eight years old to Spokin Lake, a 25-minute drive from Williams Lake.
He grew up playing every type of soccer, such as rep and house and later men’s league, he said, noting he also played hockey and was a hockey ref.
This summer Patrick has been working as a firefighter with the BC Wildfire Service’s junior initial attack program.
When the Spokin Lake first started burning on Friday, July 7 it was located about seven kilometres as the crow flies from his family’s property.
Patrick worked a 29.5-hour shift that night. It was his fourth day on the job.
“Now there is cat guard going right through our property. The fire burned up to the line of our property but did not burn any things,” he said.
Being part of the firefighting effort during a season when some of the largest fires in the province’s history are burning has been an amazing experience, Patrick said.
“I really cannot put it into words, but I wasn’t expecting the fire season to be like this. I’ve been working tons and learning lots and everyone I’ve worked with from the whole initial attack crew here in the Cariboo has been amazing. There has not been a day when I’ve woken up and said ‘I don’t want to go to work.””
There were a couple of times where his crew was pulled out for safety reasons, including July 15 when Williams Lake was evacuated.
“I was working at Forest Lake that afternoon. We just got the fire wrapped in a cat guard, got the pump set up and were laying hose down to put water on it. We were finally thinking ‘yeah we’ve got this fire.’ Then the fire just to the south of us blew up and was coming toward us so we had to get out of there.”
The crew returned to the Cariboo Fire Centre at the Williams Lake Airport Patrick could see columns of smoke 180 degrees on the horizon, he said.