Retired journalist-turned-hero recounts golf course rescue

CBC

20-05-2025

Retired journalist Glenn Payette doesn't typically find himself in the middle of a story but that all changed when he heard an unsettling noise on the site of a former St. John's golf course last Thursday.
He and his wife Pam Frampton first thought the sound was coming from a goose as they strolled along Logy Bay Road.
"Suddenly I went, 'No, no, hang on here,'" Payette told CBC Radio's The St. John's Morning Show.
"'That sounds like somebody might be calling their dog.'"
Payette made a beeline for the voice when he realized it was someone in distress. A man was in an irrigation pond at the old Bally Haly course, and he looked exhausted.
Payette says he passed the man a log to latch on to as Frampton held onto Payette's legs to prevent him from falling in as well. She was on the phone with 911 all the while.
"She told them, 'There's a man in the pond. He's drowning. We need help right here,'" Payette recalled.
"Finally, I yelled out, 'We need the fire department right now!'... I didn't know how long I would be able to hold him," he said.
Payette soon realized that this man fell into the water because he was trying to retrieve his dog, who jumped in because there was a dead dog at the bottom of the pond. The man was getting anxious, and couldn't wait for emergency responders to arrive.
Finally, someone else passed by and Payette asked him for a hand.
"We were able to, the two of us, pull him up and get him up so that his bum was now on the ground and he was safe," Payette said.
The dog was soon rescued by police, but only after the officers slipped on the rubber — but caught their footing before another person went overboard.
'What if we hadn't been there?'
The unlucky man and his dog were taken in for a checkup, says Payette, but it wasn't the last Payette saw of him.
"He brought us a lovely bottle of champagne, which he didn't have to, [but] which my wife and I are going to enjoy," said Payette.
It was a surreal experience for the former broadcaster.
He says he's rescued the odd cat from a tree, has seen the aftermath of disastrous events, but hasn't been involved in anything of this magnitude.
Reflecting on his career as a reporter, Payette said, "As an observer, you're standing back."
"This was totally different. Suddenly you're in the middle of it," he added. "All of those different questions go through your mind after the fact…what if we hadn't been there?"