Come Hell or High Water: Sean Lynn on Policing, Brotherhood, and the Quiet Heroism of Men
A retired cop, father of eight, and founder of God Squad shares how floods, faith, and brotherhood forged a life of quiet heroism.
Some men measure their life in titles or trophies. Sean Lynn measured his in service—33 years on the Calgary police force, a legacy passed down from his father, and the grit of a man who kept showing up even when the weight of tragedy could have crushed him. Eight kids at home, one income, and a city in constant need of protection didn’t leave room for giving up. Yet through it all, what stands out most about Sean is not the badge or the battles, but the quiet faith that kept him steady and the brotherhood that made sure he wasn’t alone.
He’s lived through floods that tore cities apart, face-offs with gangsters, and nights of spiritual warfare in back alleys and hotel rooms. But ask him what heroism means and he won’t point to himself. He’ll talk about neighbors barbecuing for strangers after a 100-year flood, kids pulling wagons full of cookies for volunteers, or the quiet men who shovel snow at church and never get noticed. “We have heroic men doing heroic things every day around us,” Sean said. “Much like St. Joseph, they’re quiet about it. They’re not always seen—and we need to celebrate those men more.”
When the Waters Rise: Brotherhood in the Flood
The story that fires Sean up most didn’t happen in a war zone or on patrol. It was Calgary, June 2013, when the city faced a once-in-a-century flood. Entire neighborhoods drowned. The Calgary Stampede grounds—the pride of the city, a world-famous rodeo drawing over a million visitors—were underwater.
Sean was out there directing traffic in one of the hardest-hit areas, watching the city come alive in ways you can’t fake. “People were just coming out to help—thousands upon thousands. We had people setting up barbecues on the corners to feed people. Little kids walking around with wagons full of cookies for the volunteers.”
He remembers an old man pulling up with a truck and saying, “Look, I can’t do anything, but I’ve got a truck.” Two young guys jumped in with him, and the three of them hauled loads to the dump together. Nobody asked what your name was, what color your skin was, or whether you belonged. You showed up, you helped.
That spirit didn’t stop at cleanup. Within weeks, the Stampede—flooded out, fields ruined—came back under the rallying cry, “Come Hell or High Water.” Crews replaced dirt, rebuilt the grounds, and refused to let disaster win. For Sean, it was more than civic pride. It was proof of what happens when men step off the sidelines. “People don’t wait for the government to help their neighbor in these times,” he said. “That’s where we’ve fallen as a society. We’ve outsourced care. But when disaster strikes, we remember—we were built to take care of each other.”
The Badge as Vocation
Ask most cops why they signed up and you’ll hear about the adrenaline, the action, or maybe family tradition. Sean lived all of that, but eventually he saw something deeper. “Once I came to the realization that it was a vocation,” he said, “it just made it that much easier to do—especially as I matured in my faith.”
That shift didn’t come overnight. Early on, he wrestled with regrets—moments where he wished he’d treated people with more patience, more dignity. “Could I have done a better job? Especially as you mature from a young gung-ho constable to where I finished, the wisdom grows and you wish maybe you had treated that person a little better—like the image and likeness of Christ.”
Faith reframed his work. Human trafficking wasn’t a headline; it was teenage girls in pool halls, being groomed by men twice their age. He remembers dragging one girl out multiple times. She cursed him, spit venom. He gave her his card anyway. Months later, she called from Vancouver. Pregnant and scared, she told him, “Constable Lynn, I just wanted to phone and let you know everything’s going to be okay. I’m back home with Mom. Thank you.”
Sean hung up and realized God had given him a glimpse—that sometimes the seed you plant takes root out of sight.
But the badge wasn’t just about the victories. It was about the near-misses too. Like the night he faced a man high on crystal meth, barking like a dog and threatening to kill. A butcher knife in his pocket. A young officer ready to pull the trigger. Sean prayed the St. Michael prayer out loud. “The very instant I finished that prayer, he went limp,” Sean recalled. “I am fully convinced had the young constable used his Taser, that would have caused death.”
Or the robbery call where he stared down a gun at point-blank range, only to find out it was an 18-year-old film student with a prop weapon. God’s providence, he believes, saved them all from a headline that could have destroyed lives.
Carrying the Weight Together
Service takes its toll. Sean’s father—also a Calgary cop—came home from a case involving a murdered child and broke down in front of his teenage son. Sean himself carried his own share of grief: telling parents their baby had died, losing five boys he mentored in youth programs to murder or overdose, rushing into burning buildings not knowing if he’d come back.
“Anybody that’s done 25 years of policing has PTS,” one colleague told him. Sean doesn’t disagree. But what kept him from drowning in the darkness wasn’t just toughness. It was brotherhood.
When the weight was too heavy, he picked up the phone—not to his wife, eight months pregnant with their next child, but to his partner Jim, a Christian brother who could absorb the pain. He leaned on his board at God Squad Canada. He prayed with men like Jeff Cavins and Bishop Scott McCaig on motorcycle rides. “Just knowing that these men are there for me and praying with me—that I’m not alone—gave me the ability to keep going,” Sean said.
That same conviction birthed God Squad itself: four cops who saw, case after case, that behind nearly every young offender was the same story—a missing father. Sean recalls telling a partner about this after hearing Steve Wood speak at a Catholic men’s conference. The partner wasn’t sure. A week later, he watched a documentary on Rikers Island prison in New York. Of 640 inmates, not one had a father at home. The evidence was undeniable.
So they launched God Squad to bring men back into their God-given role. From there, Sean has helped build Heroic Men into an international brotherhood, giving men permission to step off the sidelines and back into the fight for faith, family, and community.
The Quiet Heroes Among Us
Sean Lynn doesn’t call himself a hero. He points to St. Joseph, silent and steadfast. He points to the dad who shovels his parish sidewalks in the dead of winter or the coach who gives up his Saturday for kids’ soccer.
“Don’t lose sight of what you’re doing,” Sean said. “Those small things build into big things.”
It’s a reminder men desperately need in a culture that measures worth by noise and likes. Heroism isn’t always a headline. Sometimes it’s holding the line when no one else will. Sometimes it’s staying faithful when walking away would be easier. And sometimes it’s just showing up with a truck when the waters rise.
Sean’s life—cop, father, founder—proves that the heroic path is forged in daily choices. Not glamorous. Not easy. But always worth it. Or as he put it with a grin borrowed from Galaxy Quest: “Never give up. Never surrender.”