RCMP Watch

Kelly Egan ( Ottawa Citizen) - The Royal Canadian Mounted Police keeps an honour roll of those who died in service. It is a permanent fraternity, now with 220 members, never to grow smaller.

The last officer to die violently, Const. Douglas Scott, 20, has links to the Ottawa area, and so did the first, in 1879.

Const. Marmaduke Graburn enlisted in June of that year. He was serving with the Northwest Mounted Police near Fort Walsh, N.W.T., when he was slain in the Cypress Hills on Nov. 17, 1879, by “persons unknown.” A native named Star Child was tried for the killing, but acquitted. An obelisk in Beechwood Cemetery commemorates his passing, the third Mountie ever to die on duty, but the first by violent means.

He was 19. A sad circle is history.

Author Robert Knuckle has chronicled those who paid the ultimate price for the RCMP in a book entitled In the Line of Duty, From Fort Macleod to Mayerthorpe, with a second volume published in 2005.

Even in brief form, it takes 332 pages to tell the story.

“Their deaths really do parallel the development of Canada as a country,” Mr. Knuckle, a Dundas, Ont., resident said this week. “They died in ways that were more primitive, that had to do with nature, like just trying to cross rivers.” Indeed. At the time of publication, 38 members of the RCMP had died by drowning, 47 in car or motorcycle accidents, 23 during rebellions or war and 16 in crashes involving airplanes or helicopters.

The greatest number, however — 59 — died by violent means.

To read how they fell is to be awestruck by the hazardous intersection of place and time. They died of exposure, from typhoid fever, from lightning strikes, by asphyxiation, by the effects of fires, from accidental shootings, in gang warfare, or thrown from horses or chasing bootleggers. They died in times of war and peace.

Some bodies were buried on remote islands, many were never found, some were lost at sea. They died at the hands of natives named Charcoal and Almighty Voice and Mike Running Wolf.

No. 33 on the roll is Sgt. Ralph M. Donaldson, who died on Aug. 14, 1908, off Marble Island, Hudson Bay. A cheese maker and farmer from London, Ont., his passing is surely unique in the annals of the national police force.

His police boat was attacked by a walrus, which gouged a hole in the hull, sinking the vessel. He was 30.

It is difficult to find patterns in the way Mounties have been slain since 1873, explained Mr. Knuckle, except to say this: as in the case of Const. Scott, it is often without a hint of warning.

“In most cases, it came out of nowhere. Most of the time it happened so quickly, with such swiftness, with such surprise.” Because the RCMP spent so much time on the frontier, there were inescapably dangerous work conditions, especially in the early years. Officers worked in isolated communities, with hunting-trapping communities that are naturally well-armed, on the forefront of alcohol and addiction problems.

“There are sometimes a lethal combination of realities involved,” said Mr. Knuckle.

The second volume of his book contains a large section on the horrifying shooting deaths of four officers in Mayerthorpe, Alta., on March 3, 2005. The author spent about a week in Alberta interviewing widows and other family members.

As so often happened in the history of the force, the deaths left behind children who will never know their fathers, and wives who must live with this yawning absence.

“Oh, the ripples in the water just keep spreading and spreading and they wash over the immediate family, the extended family, the friends and the neighbourhood and so on and so forth,” said Mr. Knuckle.

“It goes on a long way.” His book also shines a light on stories that, for reasons unclear, have never been exposed to public view. Such is the case of Const. Brian Hutchinson, who died Aug. 16, 1991, at the age of 34.

It is an Ottawa story. A native of the city, he met his future wife, Kim, when they worked at the Carlingwood Mall. He became a Mountie in 1980, serving in Saskatchewan before a transfer to Ottawa in 1985.

In 1990, as the Oka crisis heated up on the outskirts of Montreal, Const. Hutchinson was assigned to help keep peace at the barricade set up in Châteauguay, a hot spot because it was blocking commuter traffic to the Mercier Bridge.

On the evening of Aug. 12, an angry mob had gathered at the barricade. Items were being thrown toward police, including fist-sized interlocking bricks wrenched from a median.

One of them struck Const. Hutchinson on the head. Mr. Knuckle reports that he fell to his knees, but soon gathered himself, declining any medical treatment. A year later, he collapsed on the bathroom floor of his home.

It was determined later that he had suffered a cerebral aneurysm, thought to be related to the brick-throwing injury. So did No. 192 take his spot on the roll.

Const. Scott’s funeral is Tuesday. The honour roll has a new number, a new face and name, another death to mark, another life to ponder.