This guy shouldn’t have been responsible for a pet rock, let alone children and youth in a church and school.
The 100-acre woods of Canaan Land in Big River was a complete disappointment if you expected an actual river. Despite the name, Big River in Saskatchewan was devoid of any rivers. There was no way I would have ever expected a couple of us teenage Canaan Land participants to find ourselves in a desperate situation on an island in the middle of a Saskatchewan lake one day.
As usual, in Canaan Land we were directed where to go and what to do. This time it was the youth canoe-trip that was run by our church, Saskatoon Christian Centre. A church official who sentenced me, Shian Klassen, had told our “warden” Jim about the upcoming church youth event. We were then told by Jim that we were going, and so one morning we both found ourselves arriving at our doomed journey’s start among a couple dozen other youth boys and Shian, plus a couple of his helpers. After tossing our belongings into the trip’s van, a few hours later we all pulled up to the edge of some random Saskatchewan lake with our trailer full of canoes.
For some reason, the unqualified hack Shian chose to make t-shirts for it in advance with an ominous premonition; “I survived the Radical Fanatical Sabbatical”. Usually you do the t-shirt thing after an amazing experience, as a souvenir. But these bad omens were printed and handed out before the canoe trip even started, just begging for it to turn into a mass-survival situation. Predictably, that’s exactly what happened. He even wrote a chapter in his Never Give Up book about it, along with chapters on how he ineptly let his infant daughter tumble down flights of tiled stairs multiple times and sped recklessly down dirt roads with his kids in the back seat without seatbelts. This genius took his son fishing in an alkaline lake and wondered why they didn’t catch anything. He even thought it was a good idea to invade my bedroom twice to snoop inside my diary on my PC. This guy shouldn’t have been responsible for a pet rock, let alone children and youth in a church and school. But as the son-in-law of the church’s pastor, he was staffed in the school as a “teacher” and was a youth pastor/counsellor in our church despite lacking the necessary education. His only qualification appeared to be nepotism by pastor Keith Johnson.
His only qualification appeared to be nepotism by pastor Keith Johnson.
My Canaan Land roommate and I were paired in a canoe. We already worked well together and seemed to figure out how to maneuver our canoe easily enough. Lakes, islands, forests, and loons filled the next few hours as we quickly learned and got accustomed to it all fairly well. I was able to swim, and they brought lifejackets for us all. So far so good!
Then came the portages. These wretched spans of an hour or more where we had to carry our canoes and equipment from one side of a shoreline to the other across dense Sask bush. The heat and humidity quickly sapped the energy right out of us as we heaved our heavy loads across branches and thorns. The heavy sweat and panting invited swarms of mosquitos and flying pests. I inhaled enough bugs to make a meal as they enjoyed a feast on my scratched-up arms and legs. Both hands were occupied with heaving a watercraft and equipment, and the biting bastards gave zero fucks about our bug spray.
We eventually made our way to an island and set up camp. The next morning we woke up to a commotion. There was WAAAAY more water surrounding the island than the night before! And the water was rising. To make matters worse, our canoes had drifted off during the night and were nowhere to be seen. Those life jackets we had earlier? They were also in the canoes that floated off. With the water rising by 1.5 feet per minute, two sacrificial teens were directed to jump into the lake and make a desperate swim for one of the remaining canoes that was still visible in the distance. Shian guessed that we had less than three hours before being washed away. We were hurriedly rushed to pack our belongings and head to the highest point of the island.
An hour later, the water had risen high enough to convince me that I was probably a handful of minutes away from teaching the non-swimmers among us how to float on their backs so we could swim them to shore. In the nick of time, the other teen rescue-swimmers located and returned just enough of our missing canoes to get ourselves to the distant shore. Paddling furiously, my roommate and I didn’t notice the canoe team next to us that was veering right into our side. BANG! Their hit knocked our canoe over and it dumped us both into the lake. For me it was a minor annoyance of getting soaked and having to climb back into the canoe. For my roommate, it was a wildly different situation. “Help I can’t swim!” he shouted as he flailed without any life jacket in the middle of the lake. Thankfully he was able to grab the side of the canoe I had just righted. He hauled himself into the safety of our canoe and rested a moment to catch his breath and regain his orientation. Eventually we all arrived at the shore with our belongings and Shian walked to the highest point of land he could find and successfully found cellular service to call for help and end this disaster.
…Shian walked to the highest point of land he could find and successfully found cellular service to call for help and end this disaster.
27 years later, I am still learning more instances on how harmful he was to others in my school and church. He’s even been referenced on several occasions on the Legacy of Abuse podcast, including an episode guest-hosted by his own daughter Cassie. He moved to the USA, divorced Keith’s daughter, and started more churches. He recently authored a book referencing these and other harms where he convinces the reader to blindly never give up. Some of his (former) family members have done the right thing and stepped forward to validate the abused and help prevent future harm. Shian however remains silent except for his for-profit book he published on ‘never giving up’. Let’s hope he will ‘Just Stop Already’ and do what’s right.