Some things in life are meant to be. That’s the sentiment Fergus resident Russ Kelly, 59, feels when looking back on an event during his youth that changed both him, and the criminal justice system around the world, forever.
“Everything fell in the row because it was meant to,” Kelly said.
In May 1974, Kelly, then 18 years old, went on a drunken rampage with a friend through Elmira, slashing tires, throwing rocks through windows and generally destroying property.
Due to circumstances and the legal counsel involved, the “Elmira Case” became the first example in Canada of restorative justice, which brings victims and offenders together to try to repair the harm done and rebuild relationships.
Now, more than 40 years later, Rosco Films and Community Justice Initiatives (CJI), a local restorative justice-based non-profit in Kitchener, have created a documentary called The Elmira Case that shows how restorative justice has grown the case. Kelly was interviewed and has a prominent role in the documentary.
After Kelly and his co-accused were picked up by police in 1974, the case was assigned to parole and probation officer Mark Yantzi, who was also with the Mennonite Central Committee. He came up with the idea that the offenders should meet their victims, apologize and ask for forgiveness.
“Mark did a background on both the other guy and myself, saw that we didn’t have a criminal record, we never did anything like this before, it was a one-off,” Kelly explained.
Yantzi put the suggestion as an addendum on the back of a report, noting “there could be some therapeutic value in these two offenders meeting their victims and repairing the harm that was caused and bringing about peace again into the community …” Kelly said.
Judge Gordon McConnell, known for sending people to jail, agreed to the suggestion because he was seeing a pattern of repeat offenders.
Kelly, who lost his father when he was six and his mother when he was 15, said the decision to face his victims was one of the hardest things he ever had do.
“Because even though it’s harder than going to jail it was the right thing to do,” Kelly said. “Because I knew that if mom was alive that’s what she would say – ‘you’re going to meet those people and apologize.’”
The suggestion that the pair meet their victims and pay for the damage wasn’t a plea bargain – Kelly said they were still unsure whether they would go to jail – but in his view there was no other option.
“We at least owe it to the victims because … it was random, they weren’t targeted and we really messed up,” he said. “There were a lot of people that got really hurt and there was a fear in the community.”
After approaching each house, meeting his victims face to face and paying for the damages – $550 in restitution and a $200 fine – Kelly put the incident out of his mind.
“As far as I knew that was the end of that shameful part of my life,” Kelly said. “I never damaged anybody’s property after that, but I still had the problem with alcohol and drugs because I was still dealing with that deep emotional pain, that raw pain, of the loss of my parents at a young age.”
It took another decade or so for him to meet his wife, Irene, to acknowledge why he was turning to alcohol and drugs and to change his ways.
“We fell in love and she gave me a purpose and a reason, but more than that she gave me strength,” he said.
Nine years after meeting his wife, he was completely clean.
Near the turn of the millennia, Kelly was in a law class at Conestoga College and heard a speaker, Julie Friesen from CJI, discuss the Elmira Case and the impact it had on restorative justice and the creation of the agency. Kelly identified himself as one of the two offenders in the case – and he has been involved with CJI ever since.
The Rosco Films and CJI documentary, The Elmira Case, is a tool to get the concept of restorative justice out to a wider range of people, Kelly explained. He also published a book in 2006 about his journey (From Scoundrel to Scholar: The Russ Kelly Story) that is now in more than 18 countries.
“Many of our residents are unaware of this story’s existence, or significance,” said Chris Cowie, executive director of CJI, in a press release.
“CJI’s debut of The Elmira Case represents an opportunity to spread awareness of our region’s seminal role in the restorative justice movement.”
The documentary played the in the U.S. at the Peace on Earth Film Festival, the 2015 Northeast Asian Regional Peacebuilding Institute in Mongolia, and the Grand River Film Festival in Kitchener.
The Elmira Case will debut during Restorative Justice Week at the Apollo Cinema in Kitchener on Nov. 19 at 7pm. There will be a panel discussion following the film featuring Kelly and other participants in the Elmira Case. Tickets can be purchased at https://the-elmira-case.eventbrite.ca.
