A distinguished alumnus
Acadia University to recognize Coldbrook native with award this spring
Acadia University has always been a special place to Dr. Trevor Jain.
He was only two months old when his family moved from Ontario to the Annapolis Valley, when his father, Nirmal, was hired for a faculty position. His mother, June, taught in the Annapolis Valley and attended Acadia parttime to further her education. His sister, Theresa Pelley, did a master’s degree there after doing her undergrad at Dalhousie University in Halifax.
Jain went to Aldershot Elementary School, Kings County Academy and Central Kings Rural High School before attending Acadia, where he studied biology and computer science.
“It had that small-campus feel whereby the third or fourth year the professors knew you by your name,” Jain said. “You just weren’t a number. And that really, really helps students a lot.”
Later this spring, Jain, a member of the 1993 graduating class and an emergency and disaster medicine physician who works at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital emergency department in Charlottetown, will receive this year’s Distinguished Alumni Award.
“Dr. Jain’s persistent curiosity and ambition to learn represents the untapped potential that exists in all of us,” Acadia Alumni Association president Donalda MacBeath said in a story posted to the university’s website. “The foundational experience he had at Acadia prepared him to meet the challenge of the Swissair Disaster in 1998 and he has continued throughout his career to develop his personal and professional skills to help others, save lives and provide leadership amid chaos and distress. He is a bright light in our alumni community, and we are delighted to recognize him as this year’s Distinguished Alumni Award recipient.”
Jain said it was very humbling to receive notification about the award.
“I was quite honoured to have even been considered,” the Coldbrook native said.
It is the latest in a distinguished list of accolades Jain, a 34-year veteran and a lieutenant-colonel in the Canadian Armed Forces, has earned.
It includes receiving the Meritorious Service Medal of Canada from the Governor General in 1999 for his work in responding to the Swissair disaster in September 1998. He was admitted to the Order of Military Merit at the officer level in 2018, at which point he was only one of five people of the 26,000 people enlisted in the Canadian military to receive the designation. And last fall, he received the John McCrae Memorial Medal by the Canadian Medical Association for his contribution to both the medical field and Canadian Forces.
LEADERSHIP AND TEAMWORK
Jain has shown his leadership and teamwork skills in many ways during his military and civilian career.
One of the recent ways was when he developed the COVID Warrior Coins to recognize everyday citizens for helping Prince Edward Island during the pandemic. It has included everyone from a grocery store clerk to an Island Waste Management Corporation employee. The coin includes the phrase, ‘We’re a team of teams.’
“This response is not just about health-care providers.
It’s about the public as the whole,” Jain said. “My point was this, we’re all in this together.”
Jain traces those leadership skills back to things he learned during his early days with the military.
“The West Nova Scotia Regiment taught me a lot about leadership,” he said.
His connection with the military began when he was 17 years old, looking for a part-time job.
“In the ’80s, the only parttime work available was to join the Army for eight weeks,” he said.
But it became much more than an eight-week job to earn some money. He stayed through high school and Acadia and those skills have been invaluable.
“They set me on a path for sure. They also set me up for success at Acadia and later,” he said.
“The first two years, I wasn’t as serious with my studies as I should have been. My commanding officer picked up on that.”
Col. Ron Stonier set high standards for his officers and Jain set out to reach them.
“Trevor was a pretty straightforward, serious young man about his training with the Reserve, always trying to achieve the very best he could,” said Stonier, a teacher by trade who retired as a colonel in the Army Reserve. “And so much depends upon attitude in anything that you do and certainly Trevor displayed a very positive attitude towards training.”
Stonier is proud of Jain and his accomplishments.
“He’s a very intelligent, talented, hard-working guy.”
ALWAYS LEARNING
Jain was busy during his Acadia days. On top of his program requirements and work with the West Nova Scotia Regiment, he also volunteered at the Valley Regional Hospital in Kentville.
“I ended up in the pathology lab and I started volunteering doing autopsies with the pathologist, Dr. Jung,” he said. “He really got me excited about medicine.”
After graduating with his bachelor of science from Acadia, Jain did some graduate work at UPEI in Charlottetown before entering the Faculty of Medicine at Dalhousie.
During his fourth year of studying medicine, Swissair Flight 111 plunged into the
Atlantic Ocean near Peggy’s Cove. None of the 229 people on board survived.
Jain was tasked with designing, setting up and running a morgue.
“It was like your training kicks in and you just are like ‘OK, this is what I need, this is how I’ve got to do it,’’’ Jain said in 2008 in a story published in The Guardian to mark the 10th anniversary of the tragedy.
The military has had a big impact on Jain’s life.
Stonier remembers Jain asking for permission to wear his uniform to his graduation ceremony.
“It just shows the pride that he had in his service, to the Reserve and to his country,” he said.