Despite garnering a ton of local support in online voting, Kevin Roy will not be named Mr. Health and Fitness for 2021.
The bodybuilder originally from Sturgeon Falls was one of several hundred entrants vying for the title that came with a feature spread in Muscle and Fitness magazine and a $20,000 cash prize. But when the latest round of voting for the contest ended on July 16, Roy placed third in his 46-man group, two spots shy of advancing to the quarterfinals.
“Regardless, it’s a pretty cool opportunity and I’m very humbled by the support that I’ve had,” he says. “A lot of people reached out, this was a contest that was all over the world and to make it that far was definitely humbling.”
Though he won’t officially be Mr. Health and Fitness, Roy is going to continue to use his platform to encourage others to live a healthy lifestyle. “The most important thing I want to do is be a role model for people,” he says. “I just simply enjoy health and fitness and I want to help people.”
Roy now works as a police officer with the Nishnawbe Aski Police Service in Slate Falls. The remote northern community is a seven-hour drive from Thunder Bay, meaning he’ll work eight days on and six off. Considering he’s the only officer there when on duty, that can make sticking to a workout schedule a challenge. But Roy has always made time for fitness.
Influenced by this father, he first got into working out while attending Northern Secondary.
“I always looked up to my dad, I always wanted to look like him and be like him,” says Roy. “So, he brought me in the gym at 13 and then I became addicted to it where I was able to see a positive difference when I played hockey, and my confidence grew as well. That helped me develop mental resiliency to attain any goals I wanted.”
Once he got to Collège Boréal, Roy got into competitive bodybuilding, but doing so naturally, without the use of substances like steroids, HGH or others. There were natural bodybuilding competitions he placed well in, but after coming second in an open competition in Sudbury – which is for builders of all types – he gained the confidence that he could compete at any level.
At the same time, Roy followed his father, a pilot with the Ministry of Natural Resources, into firefighting, first working summers and then full-time. The erratic schedule should have meant he’d be unable to keep up his training, but instead it was just another test of his “mental resiliency.”
“With the MNR you could be gone at a moment’s notice for 18 days and you don’t know where you’re going: it could be across Canada, it could be in a swamp in the middle of nowhere… you’re working 18 hour days where you’re bringing a hose up a mountain and you’re fighting a forest fire. Despite working long hours, I brought something with me called a TRX – it’s like a suspension system that you can put around a tree – and I was able to do workouts with that after I was done an 18-hour day,” he recounts.
