Maria Cook and Christian Bergmeister, Ottawa (Ottawa Citizen) – Standing beside the flag-draped coffin of Chief Supt. Doug Coates, RCMP chaplain Marcel Lahaie said: “We don’t expect to go at 52 years of age.” Yet, what matters is “what we do with the days that are given to us.”
About 1,600 people, mostly police from across Canada, attended the Mountie’s funeral Wednesday at Ottawa’s Notre-Dame Basilica on Sussex Drive, about a two minute walk to the prime minister’s residence.
The ornate church was full, forcing the overflow of about 400 to watch the two-and-a-half hour service on a big screen at the nearby Chateau Laurier hotel.
An hour before, the funeral procession had made its way through downtown Ottawa.
About 900 officers from RCMP detachments and police departments across the country took part in the procession consisting of the red serge of RCMP officers, green uniforms of Quebec provincial police, and the blue coats of officers from various city police departments.
Six pallbearers — five RCMP officers and Coates’ son Luc in his air force uniform — carried the casket into the church on their shoulders.
Coates was acting commissioner of MINUSTAH, the United Nations’ stabilization mission in Haiti.
He was meeting with senior staff at the UN command centre in Port-au-Prince two weeks ago when the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that devastated the country destroyed the building they were in, killing the Gatineau, Que., resident.
“We come together today as a family, stricken by grief, bewildered by the sudden loss,” said RCMP Commissioner William Elliott in a eulogy.
“It is most fitting that we gather here today in the shadow of Canada’s monument to peacekeepers. Doug Coates truly was a peacekeeper throughout much of his career,” he said. “Doug died as he lived — in the service of peace.”
Coates’ first posting to Haiti was in 1993. He returned a year later.
Before being posted again to Haiti last spring, he headed the RCMP’s International Peace Operations Branch, which co-ordinates the deployment of members from nearly two dozen provincial, municipal, regional and military police forces across Canada to peacekeeping and police-mentoring programs in destabilized countries.
“Since becoming commissioner of the RCMP I have had the opportunity of visiting Canadian police officers in Haiti on two occasions, both times in the company of Doug Coates,” said Elliott.
“Each time, I was proud and humbled by the passion, courage and commitment with which Doug and his colleagues pursued their mission to help establish law and order in a troubled nation and help the people of Haiti live better lives,” he said.
“Doug was a good man doing important work in a dangerous place, risking his life to improve the lives of others.”
An avid mountain climber, hiker and ski instructor, Coates had been with the RCMP for more than three decades.
Raised in Coquitlam, B.C., he joined the force in 1978 and spent the first 10 years of his career policing rural and First Nations communities in Alberta.
“He led a purpose-driven life and it was his humanity in the face of inhumanity that defined him as a proud Canadian, a member of the RCMP, proud peacekeeper, a proud father and a proud husband,” said RCMP Supt. Jean-Michel Blais.
Coates met his wife, Lise, 30 years ago while hiking in Alberta. Intent on winning her, he learned to speak French. The couple was married 28 years.
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