Life of purpose vs. lives with none

Page 19

Nowhere to Run: The Killing of Constable Dennis Strongquill

By Mike McIntyre

Great Plains Publishing

223 pages, $11.95 (sc)

Constable Dennis Strongquill was the kind of officer the RCMP would have liked to plaster on their recruitment posters. The 20-year veteran served with pride in Canada's famous police force.

During a routine traffic stop four days before Christmas 2001 in Russell, Man. he was shot. Cst. Strongquill left behind a grieving girlfriend and six children-the youngest of whom was seven weeks old.

The murder initiated a harrowing overnight police chase through southwestern Manitoba and southeastern Saskatchewan.

The next day, Mounties shot one of the murderers, Danny Sand, while he crouched on the roof of a Wolseley, Sask. motel during an armed standoff.

Moments later his brother, Robert, and Robert's girlfriend, Laurie Bell, surrendered and were charged with first-degree murder.

The book by Mike McIntyre about the shooting of Strongquill isn't a bad book, for two reasons. First of all, McIntyre doesn't commit the same mistake that many do who write true crime. He doesn't ignore the victim's life.

The author spends a few chapters talking about the life Cst. Strongquill made for himself. He didn't have an easy life. He was abandoned at a powwow as an infant, and was raised by another family in northern Manitoba. He found police work at times difficult, because he would often have to choose between his friends and the law he was to serve. He also battled the bottle, eventually going dry in 1998.

But Dennis-"Bosom" to almost everyone who knew him-was a man who loved life, was proud of his job, and was an inspiration to those who met him. The Mounties posted Cst. Strongquill to command a detachment on Waywaysecappo First Nation, an demonstration of their faith in his abilities.

McIntyre, a crime reporter with the Winnipeg Free Press, expertly weaves the story about Cst. Strongquill's life of purpose and meaning with the stories of the lives of the rebels-without-a-clue Sand brothers and Bell's tale of drugs, sex, boredom and violence, making Cst. Strongquill's death at their hands more tragic for the reader.

This paperback has its weakness, though. It could have used some careful editing and fact-checking. For example, McIntyre states Cst. Strongquill was born in northern Saskatchewan. In fact, he was born in Fort Qu'Appelle, which is barely north of the Trans-Canada Highway, let alone part of northern Saskatchewan. And McIntyre doesn't even mention the band of which the police officer was a member.

McIntyre also doesn't mention if and how the officer's murder affected relations between police and Aboriginal groups. While Waywaysecappo's Elders and residents offered prayers and condolences to Cst. Strongquill's family and detachment members after his murder, no official reaction from other Aboriginal organizations in Manitoba or in Canada was recorded in this book, or in any other media coverage of the event.

This may be understandable. Cst. Strongquill's murder wasn't a racial hate crime. During their crime spree, the Sand brothers, with an immature young girl as an accomplice, were eager to shoot any police officer, regardless of police force, race, creed or gender. "Bosom" and his partner on duty that night just happened to be the ones who got in their way.

Instead of serving out his career with the police force he loved, and spending the rest of his days with his family and children, Cst. Dennis Strongquill is buried in a graveyard in Barrows, Man. This book is a good reminder of what the world lost in the shooting spree that cost that Mountie his life.