Cameron Turner

A life-threatening car accident, a family break-up and a moose accident killing my grandfather. All by the age of 12.

This is my story.

Cameron Turner was the name they gave me. Just 10 months into my life, our car collided with another and then with a wall of rock on the highway. I then flew by helicopter to the hospital back in Thunder Bay where I was born. I had scars for life with burns all over my face and body.

Fast forward through a happy and peaceful early childhood. The scars didn’t bother me too much, helped by a loving community around me. But what shocked me was when my parents announced they were breaking up in June of 2000. For me, it came completely out of nowhere. Oblivious to the conflicts they were having, I snapped out of my “Shire” of innocence and was thrown into a world where there are hurts and where things fall apart.

As I started seeking attention more from friends at school, I tried to make sense of a world of loneliness and suffering. Moving back and forth from Mom’s and Dad’s was not fun. Friends came and went and could not be relied on. The Catholicism of my early childhood was weak and substance-less, involving a few empty rituals that didn’t make sense. I was a good kid with a strong moral compass but had no sense of the transcendent, of anything bigger than what I could see in front of me. Then in June of 2004, my grandfather, one of my closest male role models, was killed when the Greyhound bus he was riding hit a moose on the highway in the middle of the night. More suffering, more questions, more confusion.

Everything changed on a Saturday in May of 2005. This is the day I became a Catholic-Christian by choice, because I wanted to. Because I felt invited into a bigger story.

Rewind briefly to explain how I got there. Eight months earlier, my step-sister interrupted my MSN instant messenger chat to tell me her music ministry team was in need of a drummer and to ask if I’d be interested in checking it out. Music by now had become a central part of my life and so another music opportunity was easy to say yes to. Meeting other members of the music ministry team, I found for the first time committed young Catholics who were warm, funny and, well, normal. They made me feel good about myself and part of the team. The music actually wasn’t that bad, especially for church music. It was through the music ministry team that I got invited to a weekend retreat called Teens Encounter Christ.

That was when things started to get real. They invited me to actually think about life, God, and Christ. To actually think about the choices I was making and how those choices really mattered. To look at the Cross and see the Face of God, the Face of love and mercy. I prayed for the first time that weekend. It was very simple - something to the effect of “God? I don’t know how to do this. Are you there? Wow, I think I’m actually praying.” Followed by a peace that I had never felt before.

The pivotal moment came ‪Saturday night‬ during Eucharistic Adoration. It was dark, and quiet, and peaceful, with candles burning. I had never seen the golden object on the altar before. We kneeled around it (I didn’t know what/Who it was at the time), and people started to cry. Their devotion was a witness to me of the Lord in front of me. The deacon spoke with such authority and love and sincerity that it made me want to believe. Something in my heart said yes to God that day.

An intellectual already at a young age, I believed in the God of the Bible that weekend, and like the first of many dominoes to fall, everything in faith and life started to make sense in the bigger story. Even suffering would have a role to play as God would bring me healing from my broken past. I had to purify grave sin and great grace would flow in (shout out to a great priest, Fr. Richard, who heard my confessions with mercy and directed me with clarity). I discovered Theology of the Body in high school and it was transformative to understand the Great Story, understand my desires, and bring my desires more in line with my design as a man in God’s image.

I became a missionary with NET Canada, a youth apostolate dedicated to rescuing the hearts of other young people. This became a great outlet for me to share this story that I could not keep to myself. I’ve been happily serving in this missionary community in different roles for 10 years. Through NET I’ve been able to invite my wife Sara to join me in this great missionary adventure, as well as our two little children (a 3 year old girl and 1 year old boy). I am also a music ministry leader for different conferences and events.

There are many chapters left to be written in my story. I pray God continues to give me the grace to walk the “narrow path” and the path to becoming a saint. Looking back, it’s amazing to see how God has worked in my life, even through the hard stuff. Some of it I wouldn’t want to relive, but I wouldn’t trade the good that came out of it for anything.